By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
According to the King County Coalition on Homelessness, on any given night more than 8,000 people are homeless in King County.
That number comes from the coalition’s annual One Night Count, which takes place every January. For those who work to provide services for the local homeless community, it’s a serious wake-up call. More funds, services and, perhaps most importantly, volunteers are needed to serve this growing segment of the population.
Representatives from Teen Feed, the King County Coalition on Homelessness, and Jewish Family Service gathered at the Seattle First Church of the Nazarene on Nov. 21 to share information about organizations that work with the local homeless population with member of the Secular Jewish Circle of Puget Sound.
“Homelessness is one of SJC’s primary concerns, along with issues relating to separation of church and state,” said Heidi Kaplan, an outreach volunteer for SJC.
The aim of the event was to let SJC members know about programs for which they could volunteer, as well as explore what role Jewish values play in working to end homelessness.
Allison Eisinger of the King County Coalition on Homelessness kicked off the evening by asking whether aiding the homeless is a specifically Jewish thing to do.
She noted that a disproportionate number of people in the Seattle area who work with the homeless in varying capacities identify as Jewish. However, when surveyed, not all Jews involved in homelessness issues considered their religious background to be relevant to their volunteer work.
“For some people, that relates to being Jewish,” she said. “For some people, it does not.”
Instead, those asked pointed to a larger desire to help alleviate what they perceive as an immediate need within their communities.
“The question for us is, what do we, as caring human beings, do about [homelessness],” Eisinger said.
In an effort to provide SJC members with an answer to that question, the discussion was turned over to Jessica Trupin and Randy Simon, both Temple Beth Am members and volunteers with Teen Feed.
Operated by the University Street Ministries at various churches in the University District since 1989, Teen Feed provides dinner for homeless youth between the ages of 12–25 five days a week. According to Simon, Teen Feed distributes between 40–50 meals a night and more than 10,000 each year.
She added that 70 percent of kids who take part in Teen Feed say they are originally from the Seattle area and that the majority have suffered some sort of abuse or trauma that led to them leaving home.
“There is this misconception that kids come to the U-District to live of the street for a while and then go home,” Simon said. “That’s not true. They aren’t coming to have fun or to try it out. They’re there because they don’t have any place else to go.”
Temple Beth Am has been involved with Teen Feed for a number of years, with volunteers taking responsibility for one meal every month. Trupin said that the people who come to help represent a wide cross-section of the congregation, many of whom are as young as the kids who come in for meals.
“It’s an amazing feeling to see 14-year-olds making and serving meals for other 14-year-olds,” she said.
Serving a different segment of the homeless population are individuals like Zoey Burmet, who started a free weekly breakfast for homeless men and women of all ages in the Cascade District (the area between downtown Seattle and Capitol Hill) and Sally Kinney, who volunteers with an interfaith coalition that runs a weekly free meal program in Lake City.
Burmet said that she and some of her friends decided to start the weekly breakfasts after noticing a significant need in their neighborhood.
“There is a sizeable homeless community in [the Cascade District] and I do consider those people to be my neighbors,” Burmet said.
She added that putting together a single meal a week has been surprisingly simple and she encouraged others in the room to think about starting similar projects in their own neighborhoods.
“It’s been incredibly easy,” she said. “We’ve never had a meeting. It’s just something we do.”
While most of the people who attend Burmet’s Cascade District breakfasts are those who consider the neighborhood home, Kinney mentioned people who have walked miles in the rain to get to her organization’s Sunday evening dinners.
“These are people who don’t always have many options for getting food on any given night,” she said, adding that most of the people who come are chronically homeless, meaning they have been consistently homeless for a year or more, and don’t have case managers.
“Things can get a little wild,” Kinney admitted. “There are was one night where I was certain everyone there was drunk.”
This statement prompted questions from the audience about the challenges that come with working with people who often struggle with mental health issues and chemical dependency. Kinney acknowledged that dealing directly with large groups of homeless people may not be for everyone, but she assured those in attendance that there are volunteer opportunities that meet all kinds of abilities.
“There are so many different ways to help,” she said. “There is no need to force yourself to do something you just can’t handle.”
Beyond serving meals, volunteers are also needed for a variety of other projects, according to Eisinger, including people to help conduct the 2009 One Night Count, which involves walking through neighborhoods and counting the number of people sleeping on the streets, in tents, and in their cars. Volunteers are also in high demand to help the coalition make the Washington State Housing Trust Fund, which funds the creation of low-income housing, a priority for in the state’s budget.
“We’re always looking for more people to go down to Olympia with us,” Eisinger said.