Although there are signs that the economy is slowly improving, the hardship for many won't end for months to come. That's the message sent by the latest local count of the homeless in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. It found 547 people without homes, including 105 children. We need new strategies for getting people into homes and helping them stay there.
This year's count is up from 485 people homeless last year, and is the highest since the count began in 1996. The results of the Jan. 27 count are sad, but not unexpected.
The Triad's unemployment rate is 11.3 percent. People who were living paycheck to paycheck have lost their jobs and have become the new homeless. In addition, the state's failed overhaul of its mental-health-care system has no doubt added people to the homeless population who otherwise would be in psychiatric hospitals or other health-care facilities.
Some of the homeless go from one relative or friend's house to another. Others stay in shelters. Still others sleep on the street. Whatever the case, more individuals and organizations should join those who have long been fighting this problem, including the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Council for the Homeless and those working with the local 10-year plan to End Chronic Homelessness. They're making progress. Since last year's count, they've put 56 more people in transitional housing.
But it's neither right nor practical to still have more than 500 men, women and children homeless in one of the largest urban counties in the state. To visitors and new residents it suggests that as a community we don't care. We know that not to be the case. But the homeless do strain our social-service system, costing us all, eventually. Homeless, hungry children can't be expected to come to school ready to learn, which could further impede efforts to reduce the drop-out rate. The city/county school system has 122 children classified as homeless, the Journal's Mary Giunca reported Monday, a number that fluctuates throughout the school year.
The effort to reduce the ranks of the homeless must be broad-based. First and foremost, our leaders must make sure that new businesses want to locate here and create new jobs. And we need to ramp up efforts to retrain laid-off workers. Most of the unemployed and the homeless want a hand up, not a hand out. But we also need more caseworkers for those homeless people who have mental problems, caseworkers who can help them stay in their own homes. And we need more affordable housing.
Local advocates have been chipping away at this problem for several years, but they need a lot more help and more ideas. We don't have the answers, but we know we cannot afford to ignore this growing problem.
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