More Than 600,000 Americans Are Homeless On Any Given Night

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/11/22/2982691/hud-homeless-count/

By Bryce Covert on November 22, 2013

More than 600,000 Americans are homeless on a given night, according to the latest government data, which conducts a count on a specific night in January every year. Nearly a quarter are children and a third were living in unsheltered places like parks, cars, or abandoned buildings.

The number of people who are chronically homeless, or who have been continuously homeless for more than one year or experienced at least four episodes over the last three, is over 100,000, and two-thirds go unsheltered. There were more than 57,000 homeless veterans.

The good news is that the government says the numbers have been declining overall. Homelessness declined by 4 percent compared to last year and by 9 percent since the beginning of the recession in 2007. Chronic homelessness has dropped by 25 percent since 2007 and homelessness among veterans went down by 24 percent.

But they aren’t declining everywhere, and some states actually saw huge increases.

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Overall, 20 states saw their rates go up compared to last year.

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Other indicators have also shown increases. The number of homeless students reached all-time high last year of more than a million, or 2 percent of the student population. The number of homeless children in Massachusetts also just hit a record high.

And a host of evidence shows that it is increasingly dangerous to be homeless. Violence against those without shelter is on the rise and news stories of homeless people who are killed for no reason have been piling up.

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