New report: Big drops in veteran, chronic homelessness, By Marisol Bello, November 21, 2013, USA Today: “The number of homeless veterans and people who have been homeless for at least a year has dropped significantly, according to the latest survey by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The number of homeless veterans fell 24% over the past six years, to 57,850, and the number of chronically homeless people decreased 25% to 92,590. Overall, there were 610,040 homeless people in the USA, a 9% drop from 2007, according to the annual count of the homeless. The survey counted people at a given point in time this past January. The number of homeless families, which shot up during the recession, also decreased 8% since 2007 to 222,200, the report shows.”
Number of homeless people declines in annual count, By Carol Morello, November 21, 2013, Washington Post: “The number of people who were counted as homeless on a single night this year declined by almost 4 percent, with the biggest drops among families, veterans and those who have been homeless the longest, according to figures released Thursday. Across the United States, 610,000 people were homeless on the night in late January when the annual count is conducted. Most were living in emergency shelters or some form of temporary housing designed to be transitional, but one third were living in unsheltered locations, such as the streets and in fields…”
Student homelessness hits record high, By Blake Ellis , October 24, 2013, CNN Money: “The number of homeless students in U.S. public schools is at an all-time high, according to new data. There were 1.2 million homeless students during the 2011-12 academic year, from preschool all the way through high school. That’s up 10% from last year and 72% from the start of the recession, according to the most recent data available from the National Center for Homeless Education, which is funded by the Department of Education. Advocacy groups say continuing economic struggles are causing more students to end up homeless, meaning that they live in shelters, motels, or are staying temporarily with someone else because they have nowhere to live…”
Number of U.S. homeless students at record level: report, By Nathan Porter, October 24, 2013, Washington Times: “The country’s recent economic woes are still being felt in the classroom: The number of homeless American elementary and high school students has hit an all-time high, according to a new federal study released Thursday. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in the 2011-2012 school year some 1,168,354 children ranging from preschool to 12th grade were without a home. That represents an overall increase of 72 percent since 2007, just before the global economic downturn. A total of 43 states reported increases in the number of homeless students from the previous year. Some of the states with the most dramatic increases were Maine (58 percent), North Carolina (53 percent) and Michigan (42 percent), followed by California, New York, Texas and Florida…”
New report finds 30 percent of teen parents in Massachusetts have been homeless, By Shira Schoenberg, September 10, 2013, The Republican: “Jasmin Colon, who works for the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy, grew up in Florida, with a mother who was in an abusive relationship. Colon helped raise her handicapped brothers. She got kicked out of her house and moved to Massachusetts at age 16, then got pregnant. ‘I was terrified. I didn’t know where I was going to live, how I’d support my son,’ Colon said. Colon said she turned to state agencies for help, but felt stigmatized by some of the providers that were supposed to support her. She moved in with her son’s father and his family. ‘It’s so important for people to understand there are underlying issues when people become young parents, get exploited or become homeless,’ Colon said…”
Report makes links between abuse, homelessness among teen parents, By Michael P. Norton, September 10, 2013, Patriot Ledger: “Thirty percent of pregnant and parenting teens in Massachusetts were homeless at some point during the past fiscal year and almost 10 percent of teen parents who were homeless had been subject to commercial sexual exploitation, according to a report released Tuesday. The authors of the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy report say it ‘exposes the cascade of trauma’ facing homeless teen parents, finding 59 percent of teen parents who had been homeless had been physically or emotionally abused or neglected by a caregiver and 27 percent had been sexually abused. Researchers cited lack of family support, teens raising siblings, and teens being kicked out by caregivers as reasons for teen homelessness…”
