Needy and homeless people eat a free Easter meal provided by the Los Angeles Mission in downtown Los Angeles last year.Recession drove more families into homeless shelters in 2010, a new federal report has found.
Some 190,000 families needed shelter last year, up from 159,000 in 2009, according to an annual survey from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. There were 595,000 people in those families.
Over the course of the past year, the number of people in homeless shelters dipped slightly to 1.92 million, from 1.8 million a year earlier. This translates into one of every 200 Americans.
"As a nation, we appear to be doing a better job sheltering those who might otherwise be living on our streets, but clearly homelessness is impacting a greater share of families with children," said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan.
The economic downturn has most likely spurred the surge in homeless families, which numbered only 131,000 in 2008. Homelessness rises with job loss, said Mercedes Marquez, an assistant HUD secretary.
It's likely that many more homeless families are staying with friends or relatives and may wind up in shelters in the near future. Some 32.4% of adults in families who entered shelters in 2009 said they had been staying with relatives, up from 24.2% in 2007.
One reason for the overall drop in homelessness is the increased federal effort to help those chronically on the street. Nearly 147,000 long-term homeless were on the streets on a single night in January 2010, down more than 18% from a year earlier and nearly 39% from 2009.
Marquez attributes the decline to the construction of additional permanent supporting housing: Some 59,000 beds were added between 2007 and 2010.
Families need more help
Families also stayed longer in shelters in 2009, with the median number of nights rising to 36, up from 30 a year earlier. Most of these families are headed by women under the age of 31, and more than half of children in shelters are under the age of 6. But more families with two adults and more headed only by a father also fell into homelessness, indicative of the recession's toll, Marquez said.
By contrast, homeless individuals are overwhelmingly male and over age 30. More than 10% are veterans and more than 40% have a disability.
Homelessness is heavily concentrated in large coastal states, with California, New York, and Florida accounting for 51% of the single-night count in January 2009.
Nevada had the highest concentration of homeless people, with 0.89% of its population without permanent shelter. The state, which is also at the heart of the housing bust, is followed by Oregon, Hawaii, California and Washington. Meanwhile, Kansas, South Dakota, and West Virginia had the nation's lowest concentrations of homeless.
Ya know, the cause of homelessness isn't because we're not making enough homes. And it's not (only) because people lose hope. It's more because the ability to start a business and/or job is too hard. The work is scarce, the development environment is, too.
ReplyDeleteSo for now, we feed and lodge them. But long term we need to give them one of these:
http://countermoon.org/index.php/foundhope-alpha.html
Give someone a place to stay if, and only if, he runs it. When it runs, he gets part of the profit. As it grows, he can seek other, perhaps better places to run, or stay where he is. But we give him independence.
Liberals claim that the massive slump in aggregate demand from the boom, means that there are massive idling resources which can be brought to work with an appropriately structured what are the advantages of easily obtainable information stimulus program.
ReplyDelete