Report places New Orleans’ homeless rate at second in the nation, By Katy Reckdahl, February 5, 2012, New Orleans Times-Picayune: “With a homeless population estimated at almost 6,700, the New Orleans metro area has the second-highest rate of homelessness in the nation. So says a new report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness. The report, which focused on the years 2009 to 2011, found the national rate of homelessness was 21 per 10,000 residents in 2011. New Orleans’ rate was nearly three times the national average, at 56 per 10,000, barely lower than Tampa, Fla., which ranked highest with 57…”

Homeless families, cloaked in normality, By Alan Feuer, February 3, 2012, New York Times: “On the sixth day she was homeless, Tonya Lewis overslept. She woke in the dark, in Room 6E at the 93rd Avenue Family Residence, a privately run shelter in Jamaica, Queens. It was 4:45 a.m. She was already running late. Rousting her children - Unique, 15, and Jacaery, 2 - from their beds, Ms. Lewis got them dressed and started shoving DVDs and diapers into two bulging tote bags. When the boys were ready - sleepy, sullen, hoodied, backpacked, in hats and winter jackets - she pushed them out the door (’Come on, we gotta go!’) to begin their daily routine…”

State’s student homeless population doubles, By Jessica Anderson, January 22, 2012, Baltimore Sun: “For a few hours after school, Ryan Johnson is just like most 16-year-olds. He lounges on the couch with his favorite Xbox game or checks his Facebook page. But then reality sets in. He decamps from his cousins’ house for the Howard County cold-weather shelter. Dinner is a meal with his father and 20 other homeless people. He goes to bed early, on a green plastic mat next to strangers, who also have no other place to go in one of the state’s wealthiest counties. ‘It has been really hard,’ said Ryan, a junior at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia. ‘I look at it like a detention I have to do every day, even though I didn’t do anything wrong.’ Ryan’s experience is becoming increasingly common. The number of homeless students in Maryland has more than doubled in the past five years, rising from 6,721 to 14,117 last school year, according to the Maryland State Department of Education…”

• Homelessness down but seen rising anew: report, By Ian Simpson, January 18, 2012, Orlando Sentinel: “U.S. homelessness slipped 1 percent from 2009 to 2011, but the sluggish economy left more poor people struggling to pay for housing and just a step away from shelters, an advocacy group said in a new study on Wednesday. The drop to 636,017 homeless people last year could prove short-lived, since it was likely due to $1.5 billion in federal aid that will run out this year, the National Alliance to End Homelessness said in its report…”
• Stimulus money kept Americans off the street, study finds, By Matt Smith, January 18, 2012, CNN.com: “Federal aid helped many cash-strapped Americans keep a roof over their heads during the prolonged economic slump, but the number of people living a step away from the streets has grown sharply, researchers reported Wednesday. The estimated U.S. homeless population dipped about 1% between 2009 and 2011 despite the lingering effects of the 2007-2009 recession, the Washington-based Homelessness Research Institute concluded. About $1.5 billion from the 2009 economic stimulus measure went toward rental assistance and programs steering recently evicted people toward new housing, ‘and it seems likely that that has worked,’ said Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness…”

• Michigan’s homeless students: Foreclosure crisis takes toll on 31,000 kids, By Jeff Seidel, December 18, 2011, Detroit Free Press: “Like a silent epidemic, the number of homeless children in Michigan schools is growing. In the 2010-11 school year, more than 31,000 homeless students attended school — 8,500 more than in the previous school year, a 37% spike attributed to the weak economy, loss of jobs and the foreclosure crisis. Overall, the number of homeless students in Michigan has jumped more than 300% in the last four years. Most experts say those numbers are low because many parents are embarrassed to admit they are homeless. And many school districts lack the resources to identify these kids, as required by federal law. Advocates say there’s also a disincentive to find homeless children. Once a district finds them, it has to pay to transport them to school and provide other services — a tough job for many cash-strapped districts. School officials who deal with these children say the numbers are likely to grow next year because of the thousands of families who have lost jobless benefits and other cash assistance…”
• For Michigan’s homeless students, a storage room of backpacks shows community support, By Jeff Seidel, December 19, 2011, Detroit Free Press: “The small cluttered motel room is filled with all their worldly possessions — bags of clothes from a free clothes locker, a fistful of utensils standing up in a Mason jar, a deep fryer, a toaster oven, a Crock-Pot, a box of food donated from a nearby church, and a backpack that links thousands of homeless children across Michigan. The backpack was given to 11-year-old Amber Phillips by the Macomb Intermediate School District because she is a homeless student. She has been living in this motel for two months..”
• Covenant House is a haven for Michigan’s homeless students, By Jeff Seidel, December 20, 2011, Detroit Free Press: “Even before the downturn in the economy, there were thousands of homeless children across the state — kids who ran away from home because of family squabbles or because of abuse or because of myriad other reasons. Some children now might have a new reason to run away. ‘Now, we are seeing kids who leave home because they feel their parents can’t afford them anymore and they feel like, ‘I have to go on my own and spare them paying for me,” said Pamela Kies-Lowe, the state coordinator for Homeless Education at the Michigan Department of Education. ‘They are trying to be magnanimous to their families. They strike out on their own and figure out they can’t make it.’ She said even those who leave for reasons of abuse might have an underlying tie to the economy…”
• Love from new families turns lives around for Michigan’s homeless students, By Jeff Seidel, December 21, 2011, Detroit Free Press: “Traverse City and Adrian are running two of the most unusual programs in the state to help homeless children — families taking in a homeless child for a year so he or she can finish high school. It’s an idea that could be replicated around the state to help agencies already besieged by too many people who need help and not enough money to go around. In both cities, homeless children are placed in mentor homes for the entire school year. Last year, 15 students were in the Traverse City program; all seven seniors graduated. In Adrian, 13 children were in the program last year and all of them also graduated from high school, including two valedictorians. Beth McCullough, who runs the Adrian program, said 87% of the homeless students in the program have gone on to higher education…”

• Report: Child homelessness up 33% in 3 years, By Marisol Bello, December 12, 2011, USA Today: “One in 45 children in the USA - 1.6 million children - were living on the street, in homeless shelters or motels, or doubled up with other families last year, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness. The numbers represent a 33% increase from 2007, when there were 1.2 million homeless children, according to a report the center is releasing Tuesday.  ’This is an absurdly high number,’ says Ellen Bassuk, president of the center. ‘What we have new in 2010 is the effects of a man-made disaster caused by the economic recession. … We are seeing extreme budget cuts, foreclosures and a lack of affordable housing.’ The report paints a bleaker picture than one by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which nonetheless reported a 28% increase in homeless families, from 131,000 in 2007 to 168,000 in 2010…”
• Child homelessness continues to rise, By Lindsay Fiori, December 14, 2011, Racine Journal Times: “Child homelessness has gone up across the nation including in Wisconsin and Racine since the Great Recession began in 2007, according to figures released Tuesday. Nationwide child homelessness went up 38 percent from the 2006-07 school year to the 2009-10 school year, the most recent year for which national data is available. During that same time, the number of homeless children in Wisconsin grew 48 percent, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Center on Family Homelessness. Locally, the number of homeless students attending Racine Unified grew 3 percent between 2006-07 and 2009-10. But 2006-07 had an usually large number of homeless students so a more accurate increase is found by looking at 2005-06 to 2009-10, when the number of homeless students increased by 26 percent, according to district data…”
• Homelessness hits families as shelters feel squeezed, By Annysa Johnson, December 12, 2011, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Robyn Greif lay beneath the covers in an Oak Creek motel, the sounds of her small children around her, thinking for the first time in days: ‘We don’t have to rush somewhere. We can feed our kids. We can shower today.’ The family of seven had driven from South Carolina in search of work for Greif’s husband, Sean, but had run out of money. They had spent three nights sleeping in their minivan because the area shelters were full. The Salvation Army paid to house them at the motel, at least through last weekend, and their prospects for permanent housing look good. But the Greifs represent a troubling trend in this time of economic turmoil: the growing number of homeless families - at a time when shelters are filled beyond capacity and state and federal dollars earmarked to run them are being cut…”
• Report: Confusion over ‘homelessness’ can mean less food aid to needy, By Pamela M. Prah, December 13, 2011, Stateline.org: “Many low-income Americans who have lost their homes to foreclosure and are living with friends could be eligible for more food stamp assistance and not even know it, says an advocacy group that is urging states to ask better questions to ensure people get the proper level of assistance. The federal food stamp program allows, but doesn’t require, states to offer a “homeless shelter deduction” that essentially increases the level of benefits for anyone without a permanent residence. Currently 26 states offer the deduction ‘and in those states, very few households claim the deduction,’ says a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C…”

More Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans wind up homeless, By Gregg Zoroya, October 28, 2011, USA Today: “As wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, federal officials are seeing a growing number of young veterans on the street, according to a joint homeless study by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Veterans Affairs released Friday. About 13,000 of the nation’s homeless in 2010 were ex-servicemembers between ages 18 and 30, a disproportionately large number of the nation’s overall homeless veteran population, the study says…”

• In western Wisconsin, homelessness moves out to the suburbs, By Andy Rathbun, October 1, 2011, Pioneer Press: “The Conde family never expected to be homeless. The family moved from western Wisconsin to Oregon in June 2009 with hopes that Robert Conde could find more jobs painting and drywalling. The work wasn’t there, and to add to the family’s hardships, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It wasn’t long before they packed their belongings and made a cold January drive back to Wisconsin. ‘Within a month’s time, it was like everything was crashing down on us,’ said Shana Conde, Robert’s wife. ‘We got back with nothing. We had no money, and our vehicles were falling apart.’ The couple and their three young children entered Grace Place, an emergency shelter in Somerset, Wis., where they stayed for five months before spending nearly a year in transitional housing. In western Wisconsin’s Pierce, Polk and St. Croix counties, the number of people staying in emergency shelters has risen 56 percent in four years, according to the Wisconsin Division of Housing, which began formally collecting the data in 2007…”
• Initiative to end chronic homelessness in Utah successful, By Marjorie Cortez, September 29, 2011, Deseret News: “The success of a 10-year initiative to end chronic homelessness could mean the eventual closure of the emergency overflow shelter in Midvale. Last winter, there were excess beds available each night in The Road Home’s downtown emergency shelter, which officials attribute to the success of rapid rehousing programs that place homeless families and individuals into permanent supportive housing. Once they settle into housing, they can begin work on the issues that have contributed to their homelessness. There have been as many as 100 open beds on some nights. Chronic homelessness in Utah has fallen 69 percent since 2006. Since 2010, the number of people considered ‘chronic homeless’ - people who have experienced homelessness once within the past year or have had three episodes of homelessness in four years - has dropped 26 percent, according to the 2011 Comprehensive Report on Homelessness released Wednesday…”

Five shelters for homeless to open in rural parts of state, By Madeline Baran, August 9, 2011, Minnesota Public Radio: “Five new homeless shelters will open in rural Minnesota this year as part of a broader effort to shift some state and federal money away from programs in the Twin Cities. The state’s Department of Human Services awarded grants to open shelters in Cass Lake, Pine County, Mankato, Faribault and Marshall, agency officials said Wednesday. At the same time, the agency cut grants to several Twin Cities-based programs, including a drop-in center for homeless adults in St. Paul and a free voicemail service for low-income adults. Advocates for the homeless said shelters are urgently needed in rural areas, but they said the government should spend more to avoid cuts to urban programs…”

More and more Minnesota renters just a heartbeat from homelessness, By Bob Shaw, June 26, 2011, Pioneer Press: “For many Minnesotans, home has never been so hard to pay for. The number of people who can barely afford a place to live has reached an all-time high, creating a new kind of client for homeless shelters - the almost-homeless. ‘I am not a failure,’ said ‘Lovie’ Robinson, 22, as he slumped at a table in the Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul. ‘It’s just that there are not a lot of jobs for people like me.’ Like many of the near-homeless, he goes to the shelter for food and supplies so he can pay his rent. His monthly income is $795, and he pays $600 rent for himself, his 1-year-old daughter and a roommate. ‘I eat a lot of pasta and rice,’ he said. Robinson is one of a growing number of Minnesotans paying more than half their incomes in rent or mortgage payments, regarded as the point at which housing is not affordable. That number spiked to 14 percent in 2009, after decades of hovering near 8 percent…”

• Homelessness in L.A. County falls 3%, survey finds, By Rong-Gong Lin II and Alexandra Zavis, June 15, 2011, Los Angeles Times: “Homelessness on any given day in Los Angeles County has decreased about 3% in the last two years despite the lingering effects of the recession, according to a new survey released Tuesday. But the number of homeless veterans, including younger men and women, grew. The study, conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority in January, put the homeless figure at 51,430 in L.A. County, including 23,359 in the city of Los Angeles, which saw a 9% decrease…”
• City’s family shelters are filling up faster, sooner this season, By Jennifer Lin, June 15, 2011, Philadelphia Inquirer: “For four days, Yasmeen Goodmond, 23, went to the city’s homeless-services office, asking for help. And for four days, she was told there were no beds for her family. With nowhere to go, Goodmond and her two children went to the emergency room at Hahnemann University Hospital. They slept in chairs in the waiting room and slipped out in the morning. But their welcome was wearing out. On Monday night, Goodmond asked her cousin to watch her 5-year-old daughter for a few days, while turning to her grandmother for help with her 2-year-old son. For herself, she stayed on the streets, walking all over Center City, never sleeping…”
• US homeless population up slightly, as ranks grow outside cities, By Tony Pugh, June 14, 2011, Kansas City Star: “Despite high unemployment and a stalled economy, the nation’s homeless population grew only slightly in 2010 as stimulus-funded initiatives helped to take or keep nearly 700,000 people off the streets, according to a federal report released Tuesday. While once a predominantly urban problem largely of individuals without families, homelessness, like poverty, has increasingly migrated to suburban and rural areas where more non-Hispanic white families are being affected. In fact, the number of homeless people in households with at least one adult and one child has increased 20 percent since 2007, and families make up a larger share of those in emergency housing than ever before…”
• HUD reports 57 percent increase in rural, suburban Americans using shelters in recent years, Associated Press, June 14, 2011, Washington Post: “As the recession gripped America, thousands more people in rural and suburban areas turned to homeless shelters for help. The number of people using shelters or transitional housing in suburban and rural areas increased 57 percent from 2007 to 2010, with more than 500,000 people from smaller communities seeking help in 2010, according to a report by the Housing and Urban Development Department. During the same time there was a decrease in the use of shelters in urban areas…”

S.F.: New homeless on street as others find housing, By Kevin Fagan, May 19, 2011, San Francisco Chronicle: “Forced into the streets by the economic downturn, hundreds of newly homeless people have been showing up in San Francisco - in cars and camper vans. Crushed by the same pressures, the number of families without homes has also gone up, according to San Francisco’s latest biennial homeless count, to be released today. The increases come even as the city has managed to reduce the number of hard-core people living for years on the streets, a reduction that has kept the overall homeless population in check. ‘It could have been a lot worse if we hadn’t created so much supportive housing’ and secured federal funding for homeless families, said San Francisco’s homeless policy director, Dariush Kayhan…”

• Number of homeless in Utah keeps dropping, By Patty Henetz, May 11, 2011, Salt Lake Tribune: “Utah’s homeless population shrank by 8.2 percent between January 2010 and this January, Lt. Gov. Greg Bell and other state officials announced Wednesday. The number of chronically homeless, defined as those who have been homeless for more than a year, dropped by 26 percent. Bell attributed the drop to Utah’s Housing First Initiative, a collaboration between government, nonprofit and private agencies that has built hundreds of units in permanent supportive communities since 2005 and is planning still more…”
• Chronic homelessness continues on a downward trend in Utah, By Wendy Leonard, May 12, 2011, Deseret News: “Chronic homelessness in Utah is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Numbers are down for the sixth straight year as the state’s Housing First initiative continues to prove itself. ‘What is surprising to me is that people are willing to give up the freedom of the streets,’ Pamela Atkinson, an well-known advocate for the homeless in Utah, said Wednesday. For years, homeless people were offered treatment for whatever ailed them and caused them to be without a home, ‘but now we know they need housing first,’ she said…”

Homeless, but finding sanctuary at school, By Micael Winerip, May 1, 2011, New York Times: “The bus ride from the homeless shelter to Fern Creek Elementary School was, as usual, raucous. A hundred times, Doretha Brown, the bus driver, had to yell for everyone to sit down. ‘This noise is what holds us up every morning and evening!’ Ms. Brown shouted, although the Collins girls - Brianna, 8; Tamara, 7; and Sydney, 6 - could barely hear her above the din. A first grader and a second grader got into a fight on the 15-minute ride, and someone else threw up. Brianna, Tamara and Sydney paid no mind. As their father, James Collins, says, ‘To get by at a shelter, you have to focus yourself.’ This is the sisters’ second stay at a shelter, so they are becoming accustomed to being homeless. Roxanne Schreffler, a kindergarten teacher, was struck by Sydney’s arrival at Fern Creek in February. ‘She walked into kindergarten in the middle of the day and sat right down,’ Ms. Schreffler said. ‘She’d immediately adapted to her new situation. There was no time integrating her into the class; she was ready to go…’”

Student homelessness tests families, schools, By Lisa Pemberton, April 3, 2011, Tacoma News Tribune: “Last fall, Desiree Lee of Lacey held a huge yard sale, packed family photos and other keepsakes into a storage unit and checked into an emergency shelter with her husband, David, and four children, ages 11, 8, 5 and 1. The couple couldn’t find work, and her parents had been helping them with bills. But then her mother died last summer, and Lee’s dad could no longer afford to help pay their rent. They walked away from a home that they had lived in for four years. For six weeks, the family lived in limbo - sleeping quarters were first-come, first-served; weekly showers were a luxury; and the laundromat wasn’t just a place to wash clothes, it was a warm, dry, safe place to hang out until the shelter opened. Lee, 28, said she slipped into survival mode. Things that would normally be important no longer showed up on her radar. For example, she missed an appointment with school officials about an education plan for one of her children who has a learning disability. And homework? ‘I couldn’t help them with their homework - I didn’t have time,’ Lee said. ‘I was more concerned about getting to the shelter in time and getting dinner…’”

Ending homelessness: A model that just might work, By Pam Fessler, March 7, 2011, National Public Radio: “More than 30 years ago, a nonprofit was launched in New York City to try to find permanent housing for chronically homeless people in Times Square. Now it has a national campaign that some people think could be an important first step toward ending homelessness in America. Standing outside an elegant 15-story brick building in midtown Manhattan, Rosanne Haggerty, who runs the nonprofit Common Ground, recalls how it all began - how a former hotel became a model for housing the homeless. ‘In the early ’80s, I lived right next-door to the Times Square Hotel,’ she says. ‘It was back in the day when Times Square was Times Square, as we say - kind of a crazy neighborhood to say the least.’ The area was known mostly for peep shows and prostitutes. It was long before anyone dreamed that Times Square would become a family destination. Haggerty worked with the homeless at the time, and was upset to find out that the hotel was about to shut down…”

Veterans more likely to be homeless, study says, By William M. Welch, February 10, 2011, USA Today: “Military veterans are much more likely to be homeless than other Americans, according to the government’s first in-depth study of homelessness among former servicemembers. About 16% of homeless adults in a one-night survey in January 2009 were veterans, though vets make up only 10% of the adult population. More than 75,000 veterans were living on the streets or in a temporary shelter that night. In that year, 136,334 veterans spent at least one night in a homeless shelter - a count that did not include homeless veterans living on the streets. The urgency of the problem is growing as more people return from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. The study found 11,300 younger veterans, 18 to 30, were in shelters at some point during 2009. Virtually all served in Iraq or Afghanistan, said Mark Johnston, deputy assistant secretary for special needs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)…”

After massive aid, Haitians feel stuck in poverty, By William Booth, January 11, 2011, Washington Post: “One of the largest and most costly humanitarian aid efforts in history saved many lives in the aftermath of last January’s earthquake but has done little to ease the suffering of ordinary Haitians since then. As U.S. officials, donor nations and international aid contractors applaud their efforts - all the latrines, tents and immunizations - the recipients of this unprecedented assistance are weary at the lack of visible progress and doubtful that the billions of dollars promised will make their lives better…”

• More families became homeless in recession, By Henri E. Cauvin, January 13, 2011, Washington Post: “During the throes of the recession, the number of homeless people in the United States increased, and the number of homeless families increased at an even greater rate, according to a report released Wednesday. The findings by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, although not surprising, confirm the harsh toll that the recession - which began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009 - took on families. Historically, people struggling with mental illness, substance abuse or other chronic problems have been the focus of government homelessness efforts, and until recently the number of such homeless people had been declining. But the recession, which has led to rising unemployment and declining social services, has slowed progress among the chronically homeless and increased numbers of the newly homeless, among them many families, according to the alliance’s report…”
• Foreclosures, homelessness surge in Alabama, By Jeremy Gray, January 13, 2011, Birmingham News: “The number of foreclosed homes across Alabama doubled between 2008 and 2009, even as the state’s total homeless population grew 13 percent, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. The alliance used data from federal agencies to monitor the change in the homeless population, with 30 other states and Washington, D.C., reporting increases. There were an estimated 6,080 homeless people in Alabama as of 2009, according to the report. The nation’s total homeless population grew 3 percent in that time to a total of 656,129. Also, between 2008 and 2009, the number of homeless families in Alabama grew 7 percent, while the number of unsheltered homeless — those who live on the street or in cars or abandoned homes — grew 40 percent…”
• Homelessness on the rise, By Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje, January 13, 2011, San Antonio Express-News: “The homeless population across the country increased by about 20,000 people, or 3 percent, at the height of the recession between 2008 and 2009, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. A new report from the alliance shows the increases were across the board - families, individuals, the unsheltered and the chronically homeless. In San Antonio, the most recent survey found 3,580 people lived in shelters or on the streets in 2010, compared with 3,303 in 2009…”

State details its efforts to house the homeless, By Paul Davis, January 11, 2011, Providence Journal: “Five years ago, the state’s top officials put together a 10-year plan to end homelessness. Their promise? Build more affordable housing and help those living in shelters move into apartments by helping pay the rent. ‘We envision a Rhode Island where no one is homeless,’ said social service directors, state officials, academics and religious leaders. In an 18-page plan submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, they envisioned a state where everyone had housing, services and ‘hope for the future.’ Five years later, the state’s homeless shelters are full, and advocates don’t expect those numbers to decrease anytime soon. Since 2007, the number of Rhode Islanders in shelters and transitional housing has increased from 3,015 to 3,514 last year, a nearly 17-percent increase, said Eric Hirsch, a Providence College professor who tracks the state’s homeless population More than half of those sleeping on cots and air mattresses in 2010 were homeless for the first time. Many lost apartments through foreclosures. Others lost jobs…”

• Shelters try ‘housing first’ protocol to help homeless people, By Bill Laitner, December 29, 2010, Detroit Free Press: “An innovative way to help homeless people, called housing first, has dramatically shortened their stays in the South Oakland Shelter system based in Royal Oak and could make shelter programs statewide more effective, experts said. By making permanent housing the first priority at the South Oakland Shelter and addressing other needs — such as job training — later, average stays dropped from four months to 28 days since summer, Executive Director Ryan Hertz said. The organization houses an average of 30 men, women and children at a time, rotating them through 67 churches and synagogues, where volunteers set up cots and serve meals. ‘We’re turning over our beds much faster, so we can help more people,’ Hertz said. But the housing-first approach has taken more than a decade to gain wide acceptance across Michigan because it requires homeless people, shelters’ clients, to have incomes, and there must be safe housing available that they can afford, Wayne State University psychologist and homelessness expert Paul Toro said…”
• New face of homelessness is a family, Dallas-area agencies say, By Kim Horner, January 7, 2011, Dallas Morning News: “First, they stayed with family. Then, they rented a trailer. Finally, they went to a shelter. Katrina Stephens, Alan Charles Walker and their three young children became homeless after Walker’s construction work dried up. Now, the family lives in a modest East Dallas apartment as part of Family Gateway’s transitional housing program. Stephens plans to finish school to become a medical assistant this spring. ‘We’re back on track,’ she said. The economy has taken a similar toll on thousands of families nationwide - and the numbers are rising. About 80,000 families - typically a single woman with young children - are homeless on any given night, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Families are the fastest-growing homeless population, according to Family Gateway and other local agencies…”

Homeless - and going to college, By Randy Furst, December 28, 2010, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “When he isn’t attending classes, chances are Christopher Sparks, 32, is hunkered over a computer in the library at Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC). He’s in his second year there, majoring in computer support and administrative network. Sparks does not study at home because he does not have one. He sleeps at the Salvation Army’s Harbor Light homeless shelter on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. His bed is a mat on the floor with 80 other men. ‘I hate it, but I have to survive,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t wish this situation on my worst enemy.’ College officials and advocates for the poor say the economic downturn has spawned a phenomenon they’re only beginning to measure and understand: college students with no stable housing, who sometimes show up at homeless shelters…”

Los Angeles confronts homelessness reputation, By Adam Nagourney, December 12, 2010, New York Times: “It was just past dusk in the upscale enclave of Brentwood as a homeless man, wrapped in a tattered gray blanket, stepped into a doorway to escape a light rain, watching the flow of people on their way to the high-end restaurants that lined the street. Across town in Hollywood the next morning, homeless people were wandering up and down Sunset Boulevard, pushing shopping carts and slumped at bus stops. More homeless men and women could be found shuffling along the boardwalks of Venice and Santa Monica, while a few others were spotted near the heart of Beverly Hills, the very symbol of Los Angeles wealth. And, as always, San Julian Street, the infamous center of Skid Row on the south edge of downtown Los Angeles, was teeming: a small city of people were making the street their home in a warm December sun, waiting for one of the many missions there to serve a meal. At a time when cities across the country have made significant progress over the past decade in reducing the number of homeless, in no small part by building permanent housing, the problem seems intractable in the County of Los Angeles…”

New faces of homelessness, series homepage, November, 2010, Racine Journal Times: “Racine has a large homeless student population. This series examines what those students face and how they cope…”

To test housing program, some are denied aid, By Cara Buckley, December 8, 2010, New York Times: “It has long been the standard practice in medical testing: Give drug treatment to one group while another, the control group, goes without. Now, New York City is applying the same methodology to assess one of its programs to prevent homelessness. Half of the test subjects - people who are behind on rent and in danger of being evicted - are being denied assistance from the program for two years, with researchers tracking them to see if they end up homeless. The city’s Department of Homeless Services said the study was necessary to determine whether the $23 million program, called Homebase, helped the people for whom it was intended. Homebase, begun in 2004, offers job training, counseling services and emergency money to help people stay in their homes. But some public officials and legal aid groups have denounced the study as unethical and cruel, and have called on the city to stop the study and to grant help to all the test subjects who had been denied assistance…”

Funding delays, housing complexities slow Haiti rebuilding effort, By William Booth and Mary Beth Sheridan, November 25, 2010, Washington Post: “Yolette Pierre says thank you, America. She points to the plastic over her head, to a gray sack on the dirt floor, to a bucket in the corner. Thank you for the tarp. Thank you for the rice. Thank you for the water, too. She is as sincere as she is poor. The $3.5 billion in international relief spent after the worst natural disaster in a generation succeeded in its main mission. ‘We kept Haitians alive,’ said Nigel Fisher, chief of the U.N. humanitarian mission. Now the really hard part begins. To weary Haitians such as Pierre, mired in a fetid camp, hoping to sweep away the tons of earthquake rubble and remake broken lives, the wait for $6 billion in rebuilding money promised in March by the United States and other donor nations is more than frustrating. It is almost cruel. Ten months after the earthquake left more than a million people homeless, only a small fraction of that recovery money has been put into projects that Haitians can see…”

• Colo. food banks see “staggering” increase in need, By Colleen O’Connor, November 18, 2010, Denver Post: “Colorado’s five major food banks distributed more than 76 million pounds of food throughout the state last year, a 25 percent increase over the previous year, and experts expect worse to come. ‘Already, this fiscal year . . . is on pace for another 7 to 10 percent increase over the prior year, which makes that a 32 to 35 percent increase over a two-year time period,’ said Kevin Seggelke, president and chief executive of Food Bank of the Rockies. ‘That’s just a staggering number. The worst news is that we continue to hear that even if the economy (goes) back to pre-2008 levels, there may be a gap of 18 to 24 months’ before the number of people swamping state food banks returns to pre-recession levels, he said. A report released this week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that food insecurity - the lack of consistent access to a nutritious, balanced diet - remained relatively stable in 2009, with the number of U.S. households classified as food insecure increasing slightly to 17.7 million from 17.6 million in 2008…”
• Employed but low-income N.J. families struggle to find assistance, By Carmen Juri, November 14, 2010, Star-Ledger: “Before the economic slump, Contina Wright and her family enjoyed the creature comforts of a middle-class lifestyle. Wright and her husband, a construction worker, spent money freely, vacationed, dined out regularly and had enough left over for savings. ‘We had everything covered,’ said Wright, 38. All that changed when the housing market plunged. With construction jobs scarce, Wright became the sole breadwinner in a family of six. Unable to pay bills, the family hit rock bottom last year and had to live at a homeless shelter for two months. These days, Wright and her family are actually lucky they found a shelter for the underemployed…”
• Hunger grows in Oregon, according to report, By Jillian Daley, November 19, 2010, Salem Statesman Journal: “Oregon is the third-hungriest state in the United States, according to a recently released report. About 6.6 percent of 1,514,000 Oregon households (about 500,000 people) had very low food security, meaning they did not have regular access to healthy food, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report released Tuesday. The number of Oregonians suffering from low or very low food security is two percentage points higher than it was in a 2004-06 study…”

Report reveals rise in homelessness, By Mary Vorsino, November 17, 2010, Honolulu Star-Advertiser: “The number of homeless people on Oahu rose 5 percent under one key measure in the last fiscal year, according to a new report that also sheds new light on the health and education of homeless children. Advocates say the study helps illustrate how the recession has driven many households living paycheck-to-paycheck into homelessness. ‘We’re still seeing people struggling,’ said Debbie Shimizu, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers-Hawaii chapter. ‘People are still trying to adjust.’ The report, by the University of Hawaii Center on the Family, said 9,781 homeless people received outreach or shelter services on Oahu last year, a 5 percent increase…”

• Program seeks to aid hard-core homeless, By Alexandra Zavis, November 9, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Prominent business leaders are putting their weight behind a plan that they say could make a major dent in homelessness in Los Angeles County, embracing a strategy that will face significant political opposition. The blueprint they plan to unveil Tuesday seeks to put a permanent roof over the heads of the most entrenched street dwellers, then provide them as much counseling and treatment as they will use. Because the chronically homeless take up a disproportionate share of resources, the plan’s authors argue that focusing on housing them will ultimately free up services for the many more people who need only temporary help to get back on their feet…”
• Solving homelessness will require cooperation, Editorial, November 9, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Los Angeles remains the nation’s homelessness capital, with almost 48,000 people living around the county on streets, in cars and in shelters, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority. About a fourth of them are chronically homeless, burdened in many cases by physical and mental ailments that make it hard for them to reintegrate into society. The magnitude and intractability of the problem haven’t stopped policymakers and homeless advocates from offering plan after plan for improving the situation, but none has made much of a dent in the homeless population. On Tuesday, yet another group will weigh in: the Business Leaders Task Force on Homelessness, a project organized by the local branches of the Chamber of Commerce and the United Way…”

A haven for homeless veterans, By David Abel, November 8, 2010, Boston Globe: “Like too many veterans of the Vietnam War, Tom Clark has been homeless for years. Now he’s making a list of all the domestic items he will soon need - a loveseat, vacuum cleaner, an iron - and considering things he never imagined would be a concern, such as how to match his bedding with curtains. ‘This is unbelievable that this is possible,’ said Clark, 58, a former Marine corporal, as he shared his list of household items with fellow veterans from nearby shelters who will join him this month in a new, daintily manicured complex in Pittsfield. It is the nation’s first community of its kind for homeless veterans and part of a new approach to fighting homelessness: Instead of moving those without homes into overcrowded emergency shelters or transitional places far from services, the $6.1 million project that looks like a high-end condo complex provides them with attractive one-bedroom and studio apartments for as long as they want to stay. The new community, which was built beside a shelter for veterans and includes an array of mental health and addiction services, allows the veterans to buy in with a $2,500 deposit and, depending on the size of the apartment, make regular payments of either $640 or $740 from their disability checks or other income to an association that they run…”

• Homeless students on the rise throughout Washington, By Carol Smith, October 24, 2010, Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “School districts around the state are grappling with how to help growing populations of homeless students, even as budget cuts further slash their ability to meet their federal obligation to do so. Under the federal McKinney-Vento Act, school districts are required to identify and report homeless students and to guarantee those students transportation so they can stay at their original schools even if they have been forced to find emergency shelter outside the district. Being homeless can affect how children learn, can lead to depression, and can be misdiagnosed as learning disabilities, labels that stick with a child for years…”
• Homelessness can cause mental problems in kids, By Carol Smith, October 24, 2010, Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “The truest victims of homelessness are young children, who have no control over the decisions that put them there, and no power to change their circumstances. The typical homeless families in the country are headed by young women in their 20s, typically with two children. Nearly half those kids are under age 5. The consequences of homelessness can be devastating and long-lasting for young children. By age 8, one in three homeless children has a mental health problem that affects their functioning, said Karen Hudson, social worker with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a national expert on homeless children…”

• Cholera reported in several areas in Haiti, By Donald G. McNeil Jr., October 22, 2010, New York Times: “A cholera outbreak in a rural area of northwestern Haiti has killed more than 150 people and overwhelmed local hospitals with thousands of the sick, the World Health Organization said Friday, increasing long-held fears of an epidemic that could spread to the encampments that shelter more than a million of Haitians displaced by the January earthquake. Even as relief organizations rushed doctors and clean-water equipment toward the epicenter - the Artibonite, a riverine rice-producing area about three hours north of the capital, Port-au-Prince - Haitian radio reported that cholera cases had surfaced in two other areas: the island of La Gonâve, and the town of Arcahaie, which lies closer to the capital. In addition, a California-based aid group, International Medical Corps, said they had confirmed cases in Croix-des-Bouquet…”
• Haiti’s first cholera epidemic in a century kills scores, By Rory Carroll, October 22, 2010, The Guardian: “Haiti’s first cholera epidemic in a century has swept a region north of the capital Port-au-Prince, killing dozens and overwhelming health services. At least 142 people have died and more than 1,500 were stricken by diarrhoea, fever and vomiting in the worst public health crisis since the January earthquake. Authorities and aid agencies scrambled to contain the outbreak in the largely rural Artibonite region before it reached tent cities housing vulnerable quake survivors…”

• Chronic homelessness down 42 percent, new Utah report says, By Marjorie Cortez, October 13, 2010, Deseret News: “Utah has experienced a 42 percent downturn in chronic homelessness from the previous year, a new report shows. Researchers and human services providers attribute the decline to a 10-year initiative that places the homeless in housing sooner and connects them to an array of services and case management to deal with issues that contribute to homelessness…”
• Number of homeless Utah kids skyrockets, By Julia Lyon, October 14, 2010, Salt Lake Tribune: “The lingering recession has taken a toll on Utah’s youngest residents, leading to a 48 percent increase in the number of homeless school-age children since 2008, according to state data released Wednesday. Nearly 12,000 children were homeless in January 2010, meaning their families had lost their homes and were typically staying with friends or relatives, officials said at the annual Homeless Summit in downtown Salt Lake City. In the Salt Lake City School District this fall, one girl was staying with friends after her mother was deported. Another teenager stayed with relatives, finishing high school in Utah after his family left the state for work in Montana. Statewide, the numbers of homeless children jumped from 8,016 in 2008 to 10,388 in 2009 and 11,883 in 2010…”
• D.C. still lacks enough shelter for homeless families, By Nathan Rott, October 13, 2010, Washington Post: “With cold weather just weeks away, the District has shelved a plan to expand its already packed shelter for homeless families at the former D.C. General Hospital, a decision that advocates fear could leave vulnerable families even worse off than last winter. A month after pledging to do a better job of sheltering the city’s homeless this winter, District leaders haven’t figured out how best to meet that promise. Meanwhile, the Family Emergency Shelter, which can house 135 families, is nearly full. And last week, 67 more families were waiting for emergency housing, with no place else to go, according to Omega Butler, chief of operations at the Virginia Williams Resource Center, which helps find housing for homeless families…”
• R.I. homeless shelters to reach record number of visits in 2010, By Chris Barrett, October 14, 2010, Providence Business News: “Visits to homeless shelters will reach record levels in 2010, the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless predicted Thursday. The advocacy group expects 4,340 people will visit shelters by the Dec. 31, the highest number since records started 25 years ago. Last year, 3,371 people visited shelters…”

Haiti still waiting for pledged US aid, By Jonathan M. Katz and Martha Mendoza (AP), September 29, 2010, National Public Radio: “Nearly nine months after the earthquake, more than a million Haitians still live on the streets between piles of rubble. One reason: Not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived. The money was pledged by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in March for use this year in rebuilding. The U.S. has already spent more than $1.1 billion on post-quake relief, but without long-term funds, the reconstruction of the wrecked capital cannot begin. With just a week to go before fiscal 2010 ends, the money is still tied up in Washington. At fault: bureaucracy, disorganization and a lack of urgency, The Associated Press learned in interviews with officials in the State Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the White House and the U.N. Office of the Special Envoy. One senator has held up a key authorization bill because of a $5 million provision he says will be wasteful. Meanwhile, deaths in Port-au-Prince are mounting, as quake survivors scramble to live without shelter or food…”

Voucher program for chronically homeless loses funding, By Jessica Anderson, September 25, 2010, Baltimore Sun: “Joseph Hill proudly shows off his new home - a one-bedroom McCulloh Street apartment that is his first stable housing in 15 years. Hill, 45, who had been homeless for a third of his life, now has a place to display his collection of battered family photos and the certificates of progress marking the two years he’s been clean of drugs. But city officials and homeless advocates who hoped to duplicate Hill’s success have run into problems. Money for a voucher program that is paying the rent for Hill and nearly 400 other formerly homeless city residents has dried up. While those already enrolled in the Housing Choice Voucher program administered by the city’s Housing Authority will continue to receive benefits, the initiative is closed to new applicants…”

Number of homeless students in Oregon continues to increase, By Anne Williams, September 23, 2010, Register-Guard: “Oregon public schools continued to see swelling numbers of homeless students in 2009-10, a testament to the reach and tenacity of a stubborn recession. More than three in every 100 students - 19,040 - met the federal definition of homelessness last year, an increase of 5.5 percent over 2008-09, according to a state report released Wednesday. The uptick surprised no one on the front lines of providing services to homeless families. ‘We see how the recession has hit,’ said Janet Beckman, the liaison to homeless families in the Springfield School District, which counted 482 homeless students last year, up from 464 the year before. ‘We know that we’re seeing families we’ve never seen before, that have never been in this type of situation before. There’s been a shift in the type of people who are needing assistance.’ But the increase between the two years wasn’t as large as the previous year’s 14 percent…”

Number of families in shelters rises, By Michael Luo, September 11, 2010, New York Times: “For a few hours at the mall here this month, Nick Griffith, his wife, Lacey Lennon, and their two young children got to feel like a regular family again. Never mind that they were just killing time away from the homeless shelter where they are staying, or that they had to take two city buses to get to the shopping center because they pawned one car earlier this year and had another repossessed, or that the debit card Ms. Lennon inserted into the A.T.M. was courtesy of the state’s welfare program. They ate lunch at the food court, browsed for clothes and just strolled, blending in with everyone else out on a scorching hot summer day. ‘It’s exactly why we come here,’ Ms. Lennon said. ‘It reminds us of our old life.’ For millions who have lost jobs or faced eviction in the economic downturn, homelessness is perhaps the darkest fear of all. In the end, though, for all the devastation wrought by the recession, a vast majority of people who have faced the possibility have somehow managed to avoid it. Nevertheless, from 2007 through 2009, the number of families in homeless shelters - households with at least one adult and one minor child - leapt to 170,000 from 131,000, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development…”

• The fastest-growing group among local homeless: families, By Lornet Turnbull, August 28, 2010, Seattle Times: “On this chilly May night in the parking lot of Southcenter mall, Cherie Moore is growing anxious. She and her 17-year-old son, Cody Barnes, sit almost unmoving in the cab of their old Ford Ranger, all their belongings crammed in the back - their 32-inch flat-screen television, a prized movie collection, Cody’s video games. Moore is down to her last $6. It’s nearing 10 o’clock and it’s been hours since the two have had a meal. Mall security has been circling. Moore knows they can’t spend the night parked here, but the 49-year-old single mother, born and raised in South King County, has no clue where to go. ‘I’m mentally exhausted,’ she says. While overall homelessness in King County has steadied, it appears to be rising among families, a trend playing out across the nation. Parents with children are the fastest-growing yet least-visible segment of the homeless population, far more likely to be doubled up in the homes of friends or living in their cars than to be at a busy intersection asking for help…”
• Refugees face homelessness all over again in U.S., By Lornet Turnbull, August 29, 2010, Seattle Times: “Every few weeks or so, the family of 10 would pack up and move yet again - the father and boys finding a bed or space on the floor with family friends in one part of King County, the mother and girls in another. Somali refugees who were first resettled in upstate New York before relocating here last fall, they shuffled between the homes of friends willing to put them up, sometimes sharing two- or three-bedroom units with the eight or 10 people who lived there. Once, the mother recounts, all 10 shared a single bedroom in a home, using each other as pillows to get through the nights. Refugee families like this one - displaced people from war-torn parts of the world - are confronting homelessness all over again in their new homeland…”
• Gates housing-first plan doesn’t come with housing money, By Lornet Turnbull, August 29, 2010, Seattle Times: “In the late 1990s, as out-of-work Ohio residents flocked to Columbus in search of jobs, many found themselves in a new predicament: They were homeless. The support system meant to help them, much like the one now in King County, was a network of agencies, each with different rules - a labyrinth with no clear way in and no easy way out. Families making repeated calls in search of help overwhelmed the system. And when putting them up in hotels became too costly, shelters started turning families away. In response, officials in Columbus created a more streamlined system - ‘one front door,’ they called it - a one-stop center that parents and children in need could enter day or night. The Columbus approach became a national model for helping families escape homelessness, and key parts of it are being incorporated in what ultimately could be a top-to-bottom overhaul of how homeless families in three Puget Sound counties are helped…”

Special Report: Homelessness in Fort Collins, August 19, 2010, The Coloradoan: “This Coloradoan special report examines homelessness in Fort Collins with a focus on how the newly launched Homeward 2020 plan will work to end the issue of homelessness in the next decade…”

• More people released from jail face homelessness: Report, By Jim Rankin, August 10, 2010, Toronto Star: “On a sticky day in June, Eric Cromwell changed into the clothes he’d worn when he was arrested two months earlier on an assault charge and walked out of the Toronto West Detention Centre on Disco Rd. He was given a TTC token but possessed little else. He did have a bachelor apartment where his rent is automatically deducted from his welfare cheque, but that’s where the latest trouble had occurred. There’d been an incident with a neighbour and conditions placed on him forbid him from going anywhere near home. He’d been in and out of jail a number of times, and on this occasion, as had been the case before, he had no home to go to. But he knew where to go. He took public transit to the Maxwell Meighen shelter at Queen and Sherbourne Sts. ‘Down here, to me, it’s like home,’ says Cromwell, 32. ‘I know where to go. I know where to get food. I know how to survive.’ Each year, more people - mostly men - are leaving Toronto jails with nowhere to call home and no plan or supports to keep them from heading back to jail, according to a report by the John Howard Society of Toronto…”
• Inmates stuck in cycle of jail and homelessness, By Joe Friesen, August 9, 2010, The Globe and Mail: “The path to prison often begins in homelessness, and the path back to freedom tends to leave former inmates homeless once again. It’s a vicious cycle of failed reintegration that leads to recidivism, according to a new report from the John Howard Society of Toronto. The report found that more than one in five inmates in the Toronto area were homeless when they were arrested. And there was little sign their prospects for integration were smoothed by their time in jail. One-third of inmates said they planned on living in a homeless shelter when they were released, and a further 12 per cent said they had no idea where they would go. The report, Homeless and Jailed: Jailed and Homeless, based on interviews with 363 people in jail, highlights the difficulties many former prisoners face when they are returned to the community. It concludes that current incarceration policies are adding to the problem of homelessness in Toronto…”

City program for homeless is criticized, By Javier C. Hernandez, August 8, 2010, New York Times: “It was envisioned as a way to help more homeless families leave shelters behind for good. But a signature anti-poverty program of the Bloomberg administration is stumbling because of lax oversight, according to an audit by the city comptroller, John C. Liu. The report, to be released Monday, criticizes the Department of Homeless Services for its management of Advantage, a program that provides housing subsidies to homeless people who find stable jobs and leave shelters. Under the department’s watch, the report said, landlords have pressured tenants into illegal side deals, with some residents paying up to $400 extra a month. In addition, the audit charged, the department did not adequately investigate the quality of apartments, potentially placing some families in buildings where leaks, faulty wiring and rodents were prevalent…”

• Homes for the hardest of the hard-core homeless, By Christopher Goffard, August 1, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “The searchers carved skid row into quadrants and advanced in small groups, aiming flashlights into the cold. They moved between nylon tents and cardboard lean-tos in the Toy District, where junkies had stripped the streetlights and left whole blocks in darkness. They roused the human bundles scattered around the tumbledown hotels and freshly painted lofts on Main Street, wasted faces blinking into their flashlights. They looked in the eastern section called the Bottoms, around the big missions and flea traps, and around the neighborhood’s forbidding eastern edge, a zone of industrial warehouses and razor wire known as the Low Bottoms, where even now, hours before daylight, the crack trade was brisk. The searchers, a couple dozen volunteers and Los Angeles County workers, had orders: Interview everyone living on these streets. Find out how long they’ve been homeless. Ask about their addictions, their mental and physical health…”
• Dogged efforts hit stubborn patterns of homelessness, By Christopher Goffard, August 3, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Bobby Livingston couldn’t sleep. The indoor quiet was unnerving, the softness of his mattress all wrong. For weeks after moving into Room 216 at the Senator Hotel, he found comfort only on a hard tile floor that felt reassuringly like the pavement. Horses and dogs flitted across the ceiling of his room, but he described the visions as familiar and untroubling, like the voices in his head. Sometimes the dead visited him full-bodied - long-gone family from the red clay roads of South Carolina - and he asked Jesus why he wasn’t yet among them. To rescue the 50 people deemed most likely to die on the streets in skid row, Los Angeles County had a pragmatic plan: Give them an apartment and all the help they’d accept, requiring little in return - not sobriety, not meetings, not psychiatric drugs. Livingston and a handful of others posed the most extreme test of Project 50’s premise. Merely living among others, with a modicum of structure and social rules, was proving a steep demand, considering what accompanied the hardest cases indoors: untreated mental illness and ferociously solitary habits formed by decades in the city’s dope dens…”

Life’s a beach for some homeless in Hawaii, By Mark Niesse (AP), July 25, 2010, The Washington Post: ” Every morning, Tony Williams wakes to the sound of waves crashing on Hawaii’s famed Waikiki beaches and has a spectacular view of the Pacific. But he’s not paying a cent for his priceless vista. Williams is among the growing number of homeless on Oahu taking advantage of inviting beaches and support services in the islands, where they never have to worry about freezing. But homeless encampments on the beach could damage tourism, officials fear, and they are currently weighing several proposals that they say would help the homeless, while also moving them from public view. The proposals include offering plane tickets to the mainland, creating a homeless “tent city” on less visible state land and providing more affordable housing in Honolulu, where rents are among the nation’s highest…”

In Haiti, the displaced are left clinging to the edge, By Deborah Sontag, July 10, 2010, New York Times: “Hundreds of displaced families live perilously in a single file of flimsy shanties planted along the median strip of a heavily congested coastal road here called the Route des Rails. Vehicles rumble by day and night, blaring horns, kicking up dust and belching exhaust. Residents try to protect themselves by positioning tires as bumpers in front of their shacks but cars still hit, injure and sometimes kill them. Rarely does anybody stop to offer help, and Judith Guillaume, 23, often wonders why. ‘Don’t they have a heart, or a suggestion?’ asked Ms. Guillaume, who covers her children’s noses with her floral skirt when the diesel fumes get especially strong. Six months after the earthquake that brought aid and attention here from around the world, the median-strip camp blends into the often numbing wretchedness of the post-disaster landscape. Only 28,000 of the 1.5 million Haitians displaced by the earthquake have moved into new homes, and the Port-au-Prince area remains a tableau of life in the ruins. The tableau does contain a spectrum of circumstances: precarious, neglected encampments; planned tent cities with latrines, showers and clinics; debris-strewn neighborhoods where residents have returned to both intact and condemnable houses; and, here and there, gleaming new shelters or bulldozed territory for a city of the future…”

• Families in homeless shelters increased 7% in ‘09, By Marisol Bello, June 15, 2010, USA Today: “The recession continued to take its toll as more families with children became homeless for the second straight year, a U.S. government report shows. The number of families in homeless shelters increased 7% to 170,129 from fiscal year 2008 through fiscal year 2009, a report released today by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found. At the same time, the overall number of homeless people in shelters fell 2% to 1.56 million. ‘As the nation’s housing and job markets show encouraging signs of recovery, there are still far too many families who are on the brink of becoming homeless or have fallen into our shelter system,’ Secretary Shaun Donovan said in a statement…”
• More families are homeless and on the streets, By Tami Luhby, June 16, 2010, CNNMoney.com: “The Great Recession drove more families into homeless shelters in 2009, a new federal report has found. Some 170,000 families needed shelter last year, up from 159,000 in 2008, according to an annual survey from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. There were 535,000 people in those families. Over the course of the past year, the number of people in homeless shelters dipped slightly to 1.56 million, from 1.6 million a year earlier. This translates into one of every 200 Americans. On a single night in January 2009, there were just over 643,000 homeless people nationwide. But, there are fewer people actually on the streets. More than 60% of people were in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs, while 37% were on the street or in other places not meant for human habitation. In 2008, some 42% were living on the streets…”

City drops plan to charge rent to shelter residents, By Cara Buckley, June 4, 2010, New York Times: “The Bloomberg administration has abandoned a controversial decision to charge rent to working homeless families living at city shelters, officials announced on Friday. Instead, under a new agreement that could start in September, such families would be required to set aside a part of their monthly earnings in a savings account that they can have access to once they leave the shelter system. ‘This plan will make it easier for homeless families to move into permanent housing with savings in the bank,’ said State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, who represents parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn and pushed for the new agreement, which had the support of city and state officials, as well as advocates for the homeless. Steven Banks, attorney in chief at the Legal Aid Society, which was poised to sue the city if it had continued charging rent to the working homeless families in shelters, described the new plan as a ‘huge step forward…’”

• Hawaii homelessness still rising in wake of recession’s job cuts, By Mary Vorsino, May 5, 2010, Honolulu Advertiser: “Despite signs of an economic recovery, advocates warn that many Hawai’i families are still teetering close to homelessness - or falling into it - as they run through their savings. Shelters islandwide report a steady flow of people coming in who are direct victims of the recession, after losing their jobs or seeing their pay or hours cut. And preliminary results from the state’s annual homeless point-in-time count, conducted in January and to be released this month, show homelessness rose 10 to 15 percent from last year in parts of O’ahu, advocates who oversaw the survey said…”
• Homeless numbers on the rise in metro area, By Helmut Schmidt, May 5, 2010, Forum of Fargo-Moorhead: “Kelvin Pederson and Bruce Wang can tell you a thing or two about homelessness. Pederson, 55, hasn’t had a place of his own for a year. Wang hasn’t had a true home for six years by his reckoning. The two residents at Moorhead’s Churches United for the Homeless said a loss of cheap housing, transportation and lack of credit are among the biggest issues that keep people homeless in the Fargo-Moorhead metro area. ‘I can starve to death and have a roof over my head,’ Pederson said. ‘Or eat and be homeless,’ said Wang, finishing the thought. Both have noticed an increase in the number of homeless people in the area. ‘Every day there’s people looking for beds,’ Pederson said. A survey released Tuesday of North Dakota homelessness - which included Moorhead - backs that up, showing double-digit percentage increases in homelessness the past two years…”

• Count of Dallas County homeless finds fewer living on the streets long-term, By Kim Horner, April 26, 2010, Dallas Morning News: “Homelessness in Dallas County increased 1 percent - to 5,750 - during another year of difficult economic times, according to a new survey by the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance. But the annual count, conducted Jan. 28, showed major progress in the city’s efforts to combat long-term homelessness among those with mental illnesses and addictions. The number of people considered chronically homeless dropped 14 percent. And the number of families on the street also dropped. ‘We’re trying to end chronic homelessness, and we got that number to go down significantly this year,’ said Mike Rawlings, a businessman who serves as Dallas’ homeless czar. He attributed the success to new permanent supportive housing programs that provide apartments and services, such as mental health care…”
• Honolulu homeless move tents onto sidewalks in legal loophole, By Mary Vorsino, April 24, 2010, Honolulu Advertiser: “In the wake of a ban on tents in city parks that police started enforcing Monday, more homeless appear to be setting up camp on sidewalks - something the city says is legal as long as they don’t block pedestrian traffic. Yesterday, several advocates and urban Honolulu residents said they had noticed more people living in tents or makeshift shelters on sidewalks recently. But advocates also pointed out that the ban prompted a good number of people to move into homeless shelters or to get on waiting lists for shelters…”

• Handing out money to stave off homelessness, By Peter S. Goodman, April 19, 2010, New York Times: “Two years into a merciless downward spiral, Antonio Moore was threatened with living on the street. He had lost his $75,000-a-year job as a mortgage consultant, his three-bedroom house with a Jacuzzi, his Lexus sedan. He could no longer pay even the rent on his cramped studio apartment - not on his $10-an-hour part-time job as a fry cook at a fast food restaurant. Faced with eviction, he was staring last month at the imminent prospect of joining the teeming ranks of the homeless. His last hope was a new $1.5 billion federal program aimed at preventing that fate. Within days of applying, a check for $775 was on its way to Mr. Moore’s landlord, enabling him to stay - at least for now. Much like the Great Depression, when millions of previously working people came to rely on a new social safety net for their sustenance, a swelling group of formerly middle-class Americans like Mr. Moore, 30, is seeking government aid for the first time. Without help, say economists, many are at risk of slipping permanently into poverty, even as economic conditions improve…”
• Homeless families in motels decline, By Nancy H. Gonter, April 18, 2010, Springfield Republican: “State statistics show the number of homeless families living in motels across the commonwealth has declined over the past two months, but it is still costing close to $2 million a month to provide them places to live. State and regional leaders in the efforts to address homelessness say a continuing need for more ‘affordable housing’ to provide these families a new start remains at the root of the problem. And, they caution that the stagnant economy and expectations for state budget reductions threaten to force even more families onto the streets in the months ahead…”

• City orders end to sending homeless to illegal houses, By Julie Bosman, April 7, 2010, New York Times: “For years, homeless people were sent by the city to illegal boarding houses, places with crowded conditions, rows of bunk beds and vermin. For many of the buildings’ landlords, it was an easy way to turn a run-down house into a fairly lucrative operation - tenants were charged hundreds of dollars each month for little more than a mattress. ‘There was a situation where individuals realized very quickly they could change their home into an illegal setup and make money,’ said Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker. On Wednesday, the city said it was going to act decisively to end the practice. More than 200 staff members in shelters run by nonprofit organizations and the Department of Homeless Services will be told to stop referring homeless people to buildings that have been found to be unsafe based on inspections by city agencies…”
• Federal survey finds homelessness, shelters are more expensive than housing, By Ted Roelofs, April 7, 2010, Grand Rapids Press: “A new federal survey finds that housing the homeless in emergency shelters can be more costly than the typical cost of rent or transitional housing. For Grand Rapids, the average cost of a one-bedroom apartment is just under $600, compared to a cost of $744 a month at the Guiding Light Mission. And while the mission also offers three meals a deal and day shelter for that cost, Executive Director Stuart Ray said the point is this: It costs more to house the homeless than prevent the loss of a home in the first place…”