Eastside count tops last year's

In the dead of night, a group of volunteers made their way along a frozen stream near downtown Bellevue, scrambled up a bank and peered into the shadowy depths beneath an overpass.

Their flashlights found a little living room with table, chairs and metal shelving units — and a handful of sleeping people. The five volunteers made a quick count, then departed.

Across the Eastside and Seattle, volunteers spread through 13 cities early Friday to count the unsheltered homeless — those not in homeless shelters or transitional housing.

The 64 Eastside volunteers met at 1:30 a.m. before heading to Kirkland, Redmond, Bellevue and Woodinville. When they finished at 5 a.m., they'd counted 86 homeless people. That figure was added to those living in Tent City IV and one homeless person found in a hospital for a total of 153 people — higher than last year's count of 128.

"It's hard to say why the number is up," said Meghan Altimore, a volunteer who also works for Hopelink, the Eastside's largest social-service agency.

"It could be that we are getting better at the count and knowing where to look. But conventional wisdom tells us that there are three times more homeless people than the ones we find."

As the temperatures dipped into the 20s, the Bellevue volunteers trod into small forested areas in the city's core. They crunched through brush glittering with frost, pulling back tree limbs and carefully shining flashlights into the protected clearings.

Often, there was evidence of abandoned encampments: sleeping bags and bottles, cans and wrappers strewed about. In one site, yards from a major intersection, a child-sized teddy bear, the lone inhabitant, was perched on an old bed.

Altimore guessed the inhabitants had gone in search of a warmer place to spend the night.

At another outcropping of trees near a freeway ramp, the group found a person bundled deep under sleeping bags and blankets. A tarp was slung between the branches, and a bike was leaned against a tree. A red cooler sat nearby.

It was a tidy home, all but invisible to the thousands of cars that pass daily, and in the shadow of a new high-rise building under construction across the street.

The construction sweeping through Bellevue is changing where homeless people find shelter, said François Larrivée, another volunteer who also works for Hopelink.

Areas once forested and used as homeless encampments are being turned into high-rise condominiums, he said. Many of the homeless on the Eastside are hidden, and they prefer to stay out of sight, he said.

"It will be interesting to see if the face of the homeless will change in Bellevue, if it will become more like the traditional stereotypes of people sleeping in doorways, like what you see in Seattle."

Rachel Tuinstra: 206-515-5637 or rtuinstra@seattletimes.com