Homeless numbers include more families
The number of homeless has remained steady since 2007, but within the overall count are trends that can tell officials where federal resources would do the most good, the Housing and Urban Development Department says in its annual report to Congress being released Thursday.
About 1.6 million people used a homeless shelter or lived in transitional housing between Oct. 1, 2007, and Sept. 30, 2008 — about the same as the year before. But within that group, the number of families grew 9 percent, from about 473,000 to 517,000.
Officials said they also saw more demand for transitional housing in the suburbs and in rural areas of the country. Residents of suburban and rural communities made up about a third of those in need of housing, up from about 24 percent the year before.
HUD also attempts to count the number of homeless at a single point in time. In January 2008, about 664,000 people were in homeless shelters or in the streets on a single night. That’s a drop of about 7,500 from the year before, but officials point out that the count occurred just as the nation’s economic woes were beginning and did not account for soaring unemployment and other economic problems that have kicked in during the subsequent months.
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2009/07/09/D99APF880_us_homeless_americans/
