Street count finds 130 homeless people living in Corvallis’ city limits

By BENNETT HALL

Gazette-Times reporter

Ten local homeless people fanned out around Corvallis last weekend to conduct the first-ever “street count” of the city’s homeless population.

Armed with clipboards and survey forms, pairs of census-takers checked in on homeless camps, soup kitchens, bottle-return centers and other places where people without a permanent street address tend to congregate.

The tally: 130 people with no fixed address are living in and around Corvallis. A separate check of local homeless shelters found 68 people living there, bringing the city’s total homeless population to 198.

Local advocates for the homeless have been conducting an annual count of shelter populations for several years as part of a national, community-based “10-year plan to end homelessness” campaign. The last count, conducted in January, found 160 homeless people in Benton County.

Last weekend’s sweep was the first attempt to tally people camping out, sleeping on the streets or otherwise living off the social grid.

As always when it comes to counting the homeless, the numbers are almost certainly low. While a few people in shelters may have been double-counted, the survey likely missed some folks living in their cars or “couch-surfing” at the homes of friends and relatives. Others might have been in jail or addiction treatment facilities when the count was done.

Benton County appropriated $1,500 to do the survey. Most of the money went to the census-takers, who were paid $11 an hour for their time. Because the survey teams were made up of local homeless people, they generally got a friendly reception.

“We felt they would have better rapport and trust,” said Aleita Hass-Holcombe of the Corvallis Homeless Shelter Coalition, which organized the survey. “There were a few folks who weren’t too excited about having their camps found and said in no uncertain terms not to come back, but that was only one or two.”

The teams did not take names or record the locations of camps, which helped ease fears that homeless campers might be rousted from their outdoor homes. For the most part, Hass-Holcombe said, people were willing to answer a series of nine questions about their living situations, employment status, military history, access to services and history of homelessness.

The vast majority of campers — 114 out of 130 — were men. No children were found camping out (although there are currently 28 minors housed in Corvallis shelters).

Jennifer Ambrosius, 31, and Wayne Edwards, 32, who share a tent in a northside homeless camp, said they found a wide range of outdoor living arrangements, from individual sleeping areas to communal camps of up to 13 people, but nothing that surprised them.

“I’ve been homeless off and on myself since I was knee-high to a grasshopper,” said Ambrosius, who manages a daytime drop-in center for homeless people at 240 S.W. Washington Ave. “So I’ve seen a lot of things.”

“There’s probably a lot of sites that we didn’t find,” said Dale Combes, who also helped conduct the survey. Combes, 61, is a former Gazette-Times newspaper carrier who’s been homeless off and on for about three years.

He currently lives in a 30-year-old Dodge motorhome, which he moves from parking spot to parking spot around the city. He gets by on odd jobs and the hot meals served once a day at local churches.

But he also struggles to keep his ancient RV running until he can find a more permanent residence.

“I’ve replaced this, that and the other thing. I need a mechanic,” Combes said.

“It’s not an easy life,” said Mike Whipple, 56, a former Hewlett-Packard employee and self-described recovering alcoholic who’s been homeless for five years.

“With the kind of things Corvallis offers, you can say, ‘All right, I’m going to be homeless and live off the dole.’ But most folks don’t do that.”

Volunteers are analyzing the survey data and compiling a report for the steering committee working on a 10-year plan to reduce homelessness in Benton County. The street count provides valuable information, said Barbara Ross, a member of the Corvallis Homeless Shelter Coalition who has been involved in the strategic planning process.

”We were struggling because we just didn’t know how many people were out there. Different people had different guesses,” Ross said.

The survey will help the group gauge the full extent of the problem as it makes plans to address the issue. It will also help the Corvallis Homeless Shelter Coalition calculate how much capacity it may need this winter, when temperatures drop too low for most campers to keep living outdoors.

The organization has operated shelters in donated space for the past several winters, but so far it has yet to find a location for this year’s cold-weather shelter.

“We’ve been looking all summer long,” Hass-Holcombe said.

Bennett Hall can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.

Where do the homeless live?

Last weekend’s “street count” of the local homeless population found 130 people in the Corvallis area with no permanent address, not including those in established shelters. Of those, 100 answered a survey question about their living situations. The breakdown:

Camping: 64

On the streets: 13

In cars: 10

With family or friends: 8

Transitional housing: 5

In shelters: 3