CHAPEL HILL -- Willie Williams blew his whistle, and the first boy and girl took off.

Knees bent, elbows swinging, they raced around the orange cones behind the Hargraves Community Center before handing their batons to the next teammates in line.

"Go! Go! Go!" Williams shouted.

In his navy blue Hargraves T-shirt and sweatpants and with the whistle around his neck, Williams commanded authority.

Nothing about the 46-year-old summer camp counselor suggested he had been sleeping at a men's homeless shelter since February. With his short, slightly salt-and-pepper hair and backpack, Williams blends in with the rest of the crowd downtown.

You probably don't know him, and even if you have seen him around you probably don't know he was, until very recently, homeless. But that doesn't mean you don't have something at stake in helping him out.

That's the message that local government and community members are sending as they begin work on a 10-year plan to end homelessness in Orange County.

The towns of Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough have joined Orange County, UNC, the Triangle United Way and others to start the year-long process of creating the plan. They will formally launch that initiative next Wednesday, with a homelessness forum at the United Church of Chapel Hill.

About 10 communities in the state, and some 200 across the country, have committed to such plans, said Martha Are, the state's homeless policy specialist. Raleigh and Asheville have already implemented their plans. Durham has started writing its plan.

The federal government encourages such initiatives, Are said, because research shows spending money on permanent housing for homeless people reduces the amount that communities spend on services for them.

When people live in an emergency shelter or on the streets, they tend to require the most expensive services, Are said.

"For example, instead of having stable, ongoing medical care, the individual goes to the emergency room, is transported to the emergency room by ambulance," she said. "And, in some communities, the ambulance is accompanied by a fire truck. Whereas a person who is in permanent supportive housing has a relationship with a doctor who is able to address their medical needs in a much more cost-effective way."

A three-year study in Asheville and Buncombe County found that 37 chronically homeless people who frequently committed minor offenses cost that community about $700,000 a year in medical, jail and shelter expenses. The average medical costs per person per year in this group was about $5,500.

Emergency shelter can also cost more than permanent housing.

The cost of an emergency shelter bed funded by the federal Emergency Shelter Grants program is approximately $8,000 more than the average annual cost of a federal Section 8 housing certificate, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Housing certificates help make privately owned rental apartments affordable for low-income people. They generally pay the difference between 30 percent of the household's adjusted income and the fair-market rent approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Are said studies have found that once people are in permanent housing, many start to cover some of their own expenses.

Precise figure elusive

A precise dollar figure for the cost of homelessness in Orange County does not exist because most service providers don't keep a record of their clients' housing status.

But interviews with local service providers found at least $2 million is spent annually in Orange County on homeless people.

Most is spent by nonprofit groups that supply food, clothing and shelter to the homeless and those at risk of losing their homes. The agencies are funded by grants, the United Way and local religious congregations.

The Inter-Faith Council for Social Service is the main provider of homeless services in Orange County. It runs two shelters, a transitional housing program for women and a community kitchen, which serves three hot meals a day at the men's shelter, on the corner of Rosemary and Columbia streets downtown.

The IFC also provides groceries, clothing and sessions with a social worker out of its administrative offices in Carrboro. All told, the IFC spent almost $1.9 million in fiscal 2004 to run all of its services. About one-third of that cost was paid by donations from individuals and businesses.

People in the community and the local governments donated the equivalent of another $1.35 million in volunteer hours and in-kind donations such as food and utilities.

"The agency runs a much larger program than the cash allows us to do because of the number of volunteers and the number of in-kind donations," explained John Dorward, IFC's finance and operations director.

In northern Orange County, Orange Congregations in Missions, a nonprofit ministry supported by almost 50 churches, offers food, clothing and help with utilities and rent.

Most of the clients have a place to live, said the Rev. Sharon Freeland, OCIM's executive director. The organization's approach, she said, is that helping people get through times of crisis helps them keep their homes.

OCIM expects to spend about $167,000 this budget year on these services.

In addition to the obvious costs of food and shelter, there are expenses attached to homelessness that may not be so apparent.

For example, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and Orange County Schools together paid about $26,000 in taxi fees alone to take homeless children to school.

Federal law requires school systems to provide displaced children transportation to the school they were enrolled in at the start of the year, within reason. If families get evicted or move in with relatives in another school district or even in Durham, Orange County's two school systems pay taxis to get the children from the county line to the school, or from one district to another.

"It's a needed service," said Jeff Reilly, coordinator of exceptional children and student services for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. "There's really no argument that we want kids to stay in their school of origin," he said.

Tracking health care

But even the $2 million estimate does not factor in one of the biggest costs associated with homelessness: health care.

UNC Hospitals does not track homeless patients, but hospital social worker Marilyn Asher estimated that five to seven of the roughly 175 patients who come through the Emergency Department daily do not have a permanent address.

Some homeless people have Medicaid, but many do not, Asher said. The federal program pays for medical assistance for low-income people.

An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1996 calculated the average emergency room visit cost $383. Adjusting for inflation that cost is nearly $477 in 2005.

If six homeless patients seek care daily, that's $2,862 a day in care, or just over $1 million a year, though again some of that could be reimbursed.

On top of that initial cost, Asher said, the hospital can spend up to $7,000 a year per patient to provide after-care for patients without other means who were admitted for at least one night. That money may cover anything from a few weeks in a nursing home for a homeless person with broken bones to the rental fee for a wheelchair, she said.

How many homeless?

How many homeless people live in Orange County? The truth is that nobody really knows for sure; it's notoriously difficult to count people who have no permanent address.

A one-night count in January found 230 people who were homeless in Orange County.

But that number was likely low, said Judith Romanowski, a housing coordinator for the OPC Area Program, the agency that treats people with mental illness, substance abuse and developmental disabilities in Orange, Person and Chatham counties.

She is chairing a committee that is looking at a new way to do the count.

Romanowski said certain areas of the count seemed particularly low.

"Our report from Hillsborough was that there were no homeless people at all in the northern part of the county," she said.

A moral responsibility

Beyond dollars, some residents say the Orange County community has a moral obligation to help neighbors in need.

Sharkita and Ronnie Torain say they've been given a vision by God to start a shelter program in Hillsborough for people they describe as living in the woods, sleeping under houses and in barns and cars.

"It's our God-given duty to care," Ronnie Torain said. "It's also our civic duty to care. Caring about other people will make our community a better place to live."

The Torains hope to start their program, Neighbor House of Hillsborough, next month. It would offer dinner, showers, a cot and breakfast in churches on a rotating basis.

Chris Moran, the IFC's executive director, also thinks every person deserves a place to sleep, shower and have a meal.

"It's my sense of morality," he said. "I think [for] every person who is in trouble, or seems to be in trouble, there should be an answer to that situation."

Trying to make it

Williams' full-time job at the Hargraves Center ended when summer camp did in August. He has stayed on part-time, working with the after-school program about 17 hours a week.

Before that started, Williams said he applied for more than 20 positions with UNC Hospitals, the university and a temporary service.

He said he'd like to work at the hospital, wheeling patients to their cars when they're discharged.

Williams, who grew up on a farm in Wilson with nine brothers and sisters, said he wanted to go to college but instead enlisted in the Navy in 1976.

After 10 years in the service as a radioman, he sold cars in Long Beach, Calif., temped for the post office in Washington, D.C., and stocked dairy at a Giant grocery store in that metropolitan area.

But he says he's never kept a job for long.

"I've just found some work to keep it there, but a job is something you can live a good life with," he said.

Williams moved into a room on North Roberson Street 10 days ago. Before that, he had walked home from work each evening to the IFC men's shelter.

There, the routine was the same almost every night. He ate dinner prepared by volunteers and joked with the other men and women eating there. Then he washed pans in the industrial kitchen.

At 8 p.m., he lined up for the regular evening check-in. Upstairs, in the dorm area, he waited behind a table for a manager to hand him a key to his locker where he kept his clothes. Then, with a small towel over his shoulder, he headed into a group bathroom to brush his teeth while other guys shaved and washed up.

On Tuesday nights, he'd pull out a journal and attend a one-hour creative writing class taught by volunteers at the shelter.

"It just tears me away from the shelter life," Williams said. "I can go in there and have fun."

Williams had been saving money and applying for two-week extensions to stay on, but he found that room on North Roberson for $85 a week on a recent Saturday afternoon and decided it was time to take it.

"I was getting tired of getting up when they wanted [me] to get up," Williams said.

"Even my stuff -- they've got the keys to the locker," he said. "I guess they say you can't control your life, so they're going to control it for you."

Williams has stayed at the shelter and left before, three years ago.

He also has lived with a sister in Durham, but he said that puts too much tension on the family.

For now, he's not sure how he'll pay the $340 monthly rent with his part-time job. He's still eating lunch and dinner at the Community Kitchen.

"Obviously, you can't make it on three and-a-half hours a day," he said.