How many people are homeless in Eureka Springs? Why are they homeless? Until those questions are answered, it is hard to come up with a plan to address the problem.
On Jan. 24, volunteers with the ECHO Clinic and the ECHO Village will conduct the first Point in Time (PIT) count of homeless people in the area. It will be a collaborative effort between ECHO, A Cup of Love Ministry, and Northwest Arkansas Continuum of Care (NACC).
“This PIT count will be done the same day all over Northwest Arkansas,” Dr. Dan Bell, who co-founded ECHO Clinic and ECHO Village said. “This is part of an effort to effectively end homelessness by 2025. To get started, we need to quantify and understand the problem.”
Bell said volunteers will be at Cup of Love from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday. Friday was selected because that is the day that those in need can get groceries and other supplies, in addition to the free lunches that are served Mondays through Fridays and after church on Sundays. Volunteers will be filling out a four-page survey on each individual or family.
“This group will be hard to reach so we’re hoping people will help us get the word out and help us get an accurate count,” Bell said. “This will be the first count of the homeless attempted in our community. The survey is so detailed because we want to not only find them a home, but help with other needs such as employment, transportation and health care.”
Bell said the idea is to get a handle on the needs so they can be systematically addressed. Suzie has been doing this with the ECHO village, but they have been constrained by the number of units available. The local group plans to apply for a grant to hire a social worker who would be in charge of coordinating housing and other needs.
“We have a volunteer community social worker, Tom Lewis, who has extensive experience with the homeless. He has been helping out a lot, but it would be really effective to have a grant to hire a full-time social worker. That is our dream.”
Currently Chuck and Pattie Garrett, who run A Cup of Love Ministry, estimate there are about 80 people homeless in the Eureka Springs area. That includes people who are couch surfing or housing insecure.
The local volunteers are coordinating with Northwest Arkansas Continuum of Care, which has had success with reducing homelessness in Benton and Washington counties. NWA CoC Executive Director Steven Burt said that the Department of Housing and Urban Development requires all communities to do a Point in Time Count annually in order to receive HUD services.
“The coalition believes the first step is to know how many people are experiencing homeless,” Burt said. “We have reduced chronic homeless in Washington and Benton counties by 25 percent in the past year and reduced veteran homeless by 66 percent. The first step was to do a survey to determine the needs.”
Homelessness likely can never be completely eliminated. Burt said the term used is “effectively” ending homeless working to make sure it is rare, brief and non-recurring.
“To effectively end homelessness, we need make sure the community has the ability to get them into shelter in 30-90 days,” Burt said. “We have a system in place to help those who are experiencing it so we can get them out of homelessness. What we want to end is encampments in the woods. We want to get them moved into shelters so they can get their lives back on track.”
Bell said they don’t believe there any current homeless encampments in the woods around Eureka Springs or Berryville. However, there certainly may be individuals camping in tents that the ECHO volunteers have not been able to locate. ECHO Village now has 11 housing units, but Bell said that is not enough.
“We need a lot more than that,” Bell said. “We need to think about how we go about providing more housing for people. There is a lot of housing in Eureka that is owned by people outside of the area and not being used. Perhaps we could work out a network where carefully vetted people might be allowed to use that housing on a temporary basis. We don’t have an organized shelter situation in Eureka. We could get together as a community and build a shelter, even something as simple as a bunkhouse with showers. Conversion of unused motel rooms to apartment units has also been studied.
“It seems like we could do better if we all work together on it,” he said. “People might have to get outside their comfort zones, but it could be really rewarding, too.”