DATE: Tuesday, September 16, 1997           TAG: 9709160292

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B6   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   64 lines

CAN NORFOLK HANDLE GROWING PROBLEMS OF HOMELESSNESS? PANEL SEEKS ANSWERS

Where do the homeless go when there's no room in Norfolk's shelters?

That's what some on the city's new Task Force on Homelessness wanted to know Monday.

No one knows what happened to the 2,000 homeless people turned away from Norfolk shelters last winter, Claudia Gooch told members of the 27-member panel looking into the problem. Gooch is director of community planning for the Planning Council. She said the shelters actually served 1,500 last year.

Whether the city's six site-based shelters and church shelter program with nearly 400 beds are enough to deal with what some see as a growing problem was a question with an elusive answer.

Already there are an estimated 200 to 3,000 homeless people in Norfolk on any given night. The number is hard to pin down because it depends on whose definition of homelessness is used. Advocates contend that many are not counted who should be - those doubling up with relatives without a lease, for example.

``There is no harder population to count,'' Gooch said.

And potentially homeless are two-thirds of the 7,000 Community Service Board clients, only one-third of whom are in stable housing situations, and an indeterminate number of the 50,000 city residents who rent. Many renters are ``flirting with homelessness,'' Gooch said.

Mary Louis Campbell, executive director for the Planning Council and task force chair, reported that nearly half of those who applied to the council for assistance to avert homelessness were working full time.

``There's a fine line between underemployment and homelessness,'' said David Cochran, a member of the committee who is involved with Sacred Heart Church's soup kitchen in Ghent.

Complaints about church soup kitchens in the upscale neighborhood last winter led city leaders to ask for the study.

But it is not only in Ghent and downtown that the homeless are evident, said Lee Green, coordinator for the rotating church shelter program that serves Norfolk.

``What about Ocean View?'' she wanted to know.

The task force's 27 members were appointed by Mayor Paul Fraim to make recommendations to the City Council by May. Monday's was their second meeting, and they spent most of it getting an education on the problem.

One impetus for the study may be the potential availability of federal money. Two bills pending in Congress would put grants for serving the homeless under the control of cities for the first time, Gooch said.

A proposal for using funds in Norfolk is the expenditure of more than $300,000 for a computer system that would track the homeless and link agencies and groups serving them. The three-year estimate includes a half-time network administrator.

Gooch detailed new approaches of other cities to the problem of homelessness:

Orlando has a 3-acre campus that houses and provides day services to 700 at an annual cost of $500,000.

Pittsburgh sends the formerly homeless into the streets to find and urge those without shelter to seek help.

New Orleans consolidated its delivery system for the purpose of obtaining and distributing funds.

Other questions the Norfolk task force must address are whether more beds for the homeless are needed and how much transitional housing should be available.

The group meets again Sept. 29.

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