Port Orchard Mayor Rob Putaansuu is planning to convene an ad hoc committee early in September to address the growing concern of homelessness in Kitsap County, as well as within the city boundaries.
Putaansuu’s efforts are in collaboration with those of Kitsap County Commissioner Charlotte Garrido, who has formed her own group of experts into the Kitsap Homeless Champions Committee. Garrido and other county and city officials met June 30 at a conference on homelessness hosted by the Suquamish Tribe.
The mayor’s committee will look into how city government can adjust its regulations that would allow for greater flexibility in creating housing opportunities.
“I’ve been gathering a group of people from the faith-based community, social-service providers, Kitsap Mental Health, a City Council member — people who are interested and knowledgeable about the issue,” Putaansuu said.
Apart from the human aspect of homelessness — individuals, couples and families who for various reasons find themselves without housing — Putaansuu said the issue has impacted businesses in Port Orchard.
“It’s a common complaint from business owners that I’ve been dealing with,” he said.
“People are showing up for work and they’re finding people sleeping on their (business’s) doorstep. Or they are sleeping in the bushes. All you have to do is open your eyes and you’ll see the problem. “We need to try and help with this problem and find some solutions.”
One solution found to be successful in Utah is a concept known as permanent supportive housing, Putaansuu said. At the June 30 county conference, the mayor said Lloyd Pendleton, a businessman-turned-government director who has led the fight to eliminate homelessness in the Beehive State, was a featured speaker.
Pendleton was able to gain support from the business community, faith-based organizations and government there to work together and create housing for people dealing with homelessness.
Pendleton’s plan to combat homelessness followed the creed “find housing first,” and then follow up with needed support services. Currently, most government and non-profit agency programs have a list of bureaucratic prerequisites that individuals must meet before they can get housing.
The “housing first” concept in Utah was created for two reasons: It’s cheaper to put someone immediately into housing than to shuffle them into temporary homeless shelters and through soup kitchens for an extended time. And, as Pendleton has noted, being homeless invites other social and behavorial problems into their lives that the community ultimately must address with their tax dollars.
In Port Orchard, Putaansuu said he wants to find ways the city can mitigate zoning hurdles to create housing for the homeless.
“We as government leaders have got to look at what the barriers in zoning and implementation are at the local level,” he said. “We then need to find funding sources (for housing projects), potentially through Housing Kitsap, to create some of these permanent supportive housing (solutions).”Putaansuu said the committee will investigate ways to fast-track the city’s processes: “If we find resources and we fix some of the challenges through changes to our zoning rules and regulations, how do we make this happen?”
Housing Kitsap is a collaboration of Kitsap County government, city governments and non-profit entities that seeks to find affordable housing in the county. Mayors from the county’s major cities are board members of the organization, he said.
Putaansuu sees the permanent supporting housing concept as promising, but acknowledged that its success would depend on a full buy-in by cities in Kitsap County.
“The rub is that you don’t want to be the only one doing this and then becoming a countywide magnet (for the homeless),” he said.
“We all have to work together and create a component of this in all our communities — Port Orchard, Bainbridge Island, Poulsbo, Silverdale and Bremerton.”
Bremerton does, in fact, have its own housing authority at work, the mayor said.
Another stumbling block Putaansuu sees is the NIMBY effect — Not In My Back Yard. “When you start talking about (the problem of homelessness), people say, ‘Yeah, we need to do this — but not in my neighborhood.’”
One way to overcome that obstacle is through education and a collective resolve to take action for “the greater good” of the community.
Part of that educational process, he said, is accepting that some people in the homeless community won’t succeed. But then, the mayor added, there are a portion who just need a boost from others to climb out of their personal crisis.
“There is a group of people (who will be successful). We’re trying to help them so they can get off of social services and contribute to our community,” Putaansuu said.
