Project Homeless Connect
Thank you, Bellingham and Whatcom County! With your generous support, we mobilized roughly 300 community volunteers and about 200 health and human service providers to deliver encouragement and a high level of care to an estimated 600 homeless neighbors on January 29, 2009. Your time and interest made a powerful statement: Our larger prosperity as a community is tied to the health and safety of every individual citizen.
Project Homeless Connect (PHC) is a national initiative sponsored by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), and is now implemented in over 200 communities across the United States as well as Canada, Puerto Rico, and Australia. The Whatcom County Coalition for the Homeless adopted Bellingham/Whatcom PHC during Phase 3 of the Whatcom County 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness. United Way of Whatcom County is our fiscal sponsor.
Our first PHC event took place at the Depot Market Square, the Majestic, and the YWCA in downtown Bellingham as part of ‘Homeless Connect Month' in Whatcom County. This 1-day, 1-stop event is designed to mobilize community volunteers and local service providers in order to:
- invite and welcome homeless people
- reduce barriers to service
- provide immediate and complete service outcomes
- create sustainable and long term service partnerships
- track and publicize results that connect to the 10-Year Plan
Our pre-event outreach effort sought to invite guests from the most vulnerable homeless subpopulations: Unaccompanied youth, veterans, and chronically homeless. Among the many services delivered on January 29th, PHC guests received: 104 dental exams, 98 vision screenings, 91 housing intakes, 74 DOL ID applications, 60 medical exams, 55 employment screenings, 53 Medicaid applications, 51 health insurance applications, 46 SSA applications, and 41 community voicemail applications.
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