Robert Tegland looked down at the man-made gulch about 30 feet below his sidewalk viewpoint on north Broadway.
Train tracks emerged from a darkened tunnel and then swept under the busy road.
Garbage bags and other litter on the grassy right-of-way near the tracks signaled that people had recently been there.
But even as deepening twilight threatened to erase the scene nearly as quickly as he could gaze at it, it still wasn’t dark enough yet, he said.
Homeless people who seek refuge there as a place to spend the night often wait until the near darkness after midnight to find their way down the hill to the gully, he said.
“They tend to come down here late, late, late at night,” said Tegland, 20. “They don’t want the cops to see them.”
Tegland, in the discipleship program at the Everett Gospel Mission, was one of 157 volunteers who fanned out across Snohomish County Thursday night for the Point-in-Time count.
The annual event is an attempt to get a one-day snapshot of homelessness in Snohomish County and to survey those who are homeless about the services they need most.
Last year 2,666 individuals were counted as homeless. This year’s final numbers are expected next week.
A statewide requirement for such annual counts was included in legislation passed in 2005, which has a goal of reducing homelessness by 50 percent by 2015.
Donny Cline, 41, another homeless count volunteer, is also a member of the mission’s discipleship team. He explained that people who sleep near the Broadway train tracks “will get busted, get a ticket,” if they’re discovered by police.
Tegland, Cline and the third member of the survey team, Derek Opel, 18, who also lives at the mission, continued down the sidewalk in downtown Everett, on the lookout for homeless people.
They see a man behind them with a bedroll under his arm. They ask if he is homeless. He is, he said, but he’s not interested in participating in the survey. He said he needed to find a bathroom.
The three homeless survey volunteers figured it would be tough to find homeless people on a night when temperatures slid into the 20s. Those without a fixed address often find temporary shelter to stay warm in such conditions, even for a night or two, they explain.
Other volunteers later reported that they, too, had trouble finding homeless people to survey, despite searching hard for several hours.
Among those looking were Judy Foster of Everett and her daughter, Candy Marine, of Mukilteo.
For several hours, they carefully looked around buildings and gullies along Evergreen Way. But they only found one woman, who was fiercely guarded by her dog, Foster said. The woman seemed petrified of them, she said.
During nearly three hours of searching, the most luck Cline, Tegland and Opel had in finding people was near or at “the feed.” That’s the street name for a regular, hot supper provided by volunteers at the First Congregational United Church of Christ on Rockefeller Avenue.
One 54-year-old man with a bushy beard and backpack said he has preferred to camp out for the past three years rather than stay at the mission.
“I filled it out last year,” he said with a smile when asked to participate in the survey.
Another man, 64, dressed in multiple, bulky layers, including a blue sweatshirt and a yellow-and-blue thermal jacket, said he is homeless because he didn’t want to spend $800 for an apartment.
Later, the survey team went into the church to talk to people as they ate. Cline approached them about participating in the survey with a smile and the seeming ease of a practiced salesman.
Much of his manner probably comes from his understanding of what the homeless face. He said he lived periodically on the streets for a decade.
Most recently, it was after being laid off from a job in Portland, Ore., in August, he said, and his later move to Everett. “I was drinking and sleeping under the bridges and the mission.”
One morning about three weeks ago, he said, as he popped open a 24-ounce can of beer, he made a quiet plea. “Lord, I gotta quit this,” he remembers thinking.
“I decided to get God into my life and my whole life changed in one day,” he said.
One man seated at the church’s free meal table had the look of someone who might report to someone’s house for a kitchen remodeling job. His graying hair was stylishly cut and he was wearing a red-and-blue flannel shirt, jeans and black work boots.
He says he lives by the river, which could mean the Snohomish River, but he didn’t elaborate.
When asked if the services of a case manager would be helpful, he paused before replying: “It’s tough,” he said. “I don’t know where to start.”
Reporter Sharon Salyer at: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com
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