Who Is Homeless? How Many Are Homeless? Why Are They Homeless?
Last week we briefly touched on the release of a report, Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), promising to report on it in greater detail at a later date.
The report, billed by USICH as "the national's first comprehensive strategy to prevent and end homelessness, is the result of work from representatives of 19 different federal agencies, each of which has responsibility for a piece of the homelessness issue. It lays out 10 objectives for the strategic plan within five themes:
- Increase leadership, collaboration, and civic engagement.
- Increase access to stable and affordable housing
- Increase economic security
- Improve Health and Stability
- Retool the Homeless Crisis Response System.
As a background to the solutions, the report lays out the problem of homelessness - its extent, causes, and costs. Some of its research comes from HUD's Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) for 2009, the release of which we also covered recently. It goes further, however, pulling in data from the Department of Education which requires that all state educational agencies report school enrollment information from 15,000 public school districts that have a required homeless liaison, and the Department of Veterans Affairs which collects information on Veterans using its targeted programs and some programs not operated by the VA.
Opening Doors segments the homeless population in a number of ways...
- In what manner are
they homeless?
- How many are homeless?
- Who
are the homeless?
- Why are they homeless?
- What is currently being done about it?
All of these are key to its vision of how to solve the problem.
The Manner of Homelessness
The report defines several different types of homelessness...
Unsheltered: This is the most common face of homelessness; people who live on the streets, camp outdoors, or live in cars or abandoned buildings.
Sheltered: Those without a permanent home who stay in emergency shelters or other transitional and temporary housing.
Doubled-up: Persons and families who are living temporarily with family, friends, or in a group.
While each of these sub-groups needs safe, stable housing, health care, income and community support; specific approaches and programs are needed to address their individual situations.
How Many are Homeless?
As we said last week, the 2009 AHAR reported that during its single night survey in January 2009, 643,067 people were homeless. 63 percent of those were sheltered, 37 percent were unsheltered. The longer term component of AHAR counted 1,558,917 people who had used emergency shelters or transitional housing programs at some point during the year, although many had relatively short stays in emergency shelters. These numbers are growing. Thirty years ago the homeless were single adults; the problem simply did not exist among children, and homelessness was largely tied to economic downturns. The report says, however, that in the last three decades the numbers of homeless remain high, even when times are good.
Who are the Homeless?
Among the persons counted in the one-night survey, 404,957 or 63 percent were living as individuals, and 238,110 or 47 percent were living within family groups. Families, however, were sheltered in greater numbers than individuals with more than 79 percent finding a roof in a shelter or transitional housing.
The long term survey found that 34 percent of the 1.5 million counted were individuals in families and family homelessness is growing. The 534,447 individuals in families HUD reported in 2009 was an increase of 4 percent over 2008 and 13 percent higher than in 2007.
More than two-thirds of the homeless are located in large cities and the proportion of the sheltered homeless is even higher. This, however, says more about urban shelter capacity than numbers of people. Homelessness is concentrated in several states and large cities. 20 percent of the homeless population resided in large cities, especially the Los Angeles area, New York City, Las Vegas, and New Orleans which account for only 8 percent of the nation's population. Half of the homeless are in California, Florida, Nevada, Texas, Georgia, and Washington; states that represent just 31 percent of the country's population.
The rural homeless are a very different population from those in large cities. They tend to live in cars, doubled up, or in grossly substandard housing. There are also fewer shelters and other resources to help the homeless although people are more likely to have extended family or friends to assist them. The rural homeless tend to be married, white, working females, often with children and the rate of unsheltered families is nearly double that found in urban areas. There are also higher numbers of Native Americans and farm laborers among the rural than the urban homeless.
African Americans account for a disproportionate number of the homeless on a national basis, accounting for 12.4 percent of the total population but 39 percent of the sheltered homeless.
Of the 983,835 persons who used shelters or transitional housing programs during 2009, 63 percent were individual adults and nearly three-quarters of those were men. One out of four single adults was over fifty years of age, a proportion that is increasing and 43 percent had at least one disabling condition. 13 percent of individuals were Veterans, however, that number has been declining over the past two years.
Another significant population is unaccompanied youth. The size of this population is unknown and estimates vary depending on the definition of homelessness. HUD estimates about 2.2 percent of the sheltered homeless or about 22,700 are youth but also state that this is probably a serious undercount. Other sources suggest that approximately 110,000 live on the streets, in cars, and abandoned buildings.
Within families, public schools reported close to one million homeless students were enrolled in the 2008-2009 school year, a 20 percent increase over the previous years. The families of these children are usually headed by a single female with an average age in the late 20s with approximately two children. As the data indicate that at least one of this average woman's children is less than six years of age, the number of homeless school age children may be a serious undercount of homeless children.
Each of these populations has a different set of reasons for being homeless and issues that affect services to them. We will take a closer look at these issues in a subsequent article.