Child homelessness hits all-time high in U.S., report says

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/child-homelessness-hits-all-time-high-in-u-s-report-says/

Nov. 17, 2014

The number of homeless children in the U.S. has surged in recent years to an all-time high, amounting to one child in every 30, according to a comprehensive state-by-state report that blames the nation's high poverty rate, the lack of affordable housing and the impacts of pervasive domestic violence.

Titled "America's Youngest Outcasts," the report being issued Monday by the National Center on Family Homelessness calculates that nearly 2.5 million American children were homeless at some point in 2013. The number is based on the Department of Education's latest count of 1.3 million homeless children in public schools, supplemented by estimates of homeless pre-school children not counted by the DOE.

The problem is particularly severe in California, which has one-eighth of the U.S. population but accounts for more than one-fifth of the homeless children with a tally of nearly 527,000.

Carmela DeCandia, director of the national center and a co-author of the report, noted that the federal government has made progress in reducing homelessness among veterans and chronically homeless adults.

"The same level of attention and resources has not been targeted to help families and children," she said. "As a society, we're going to pay a high price, in human and economic terms."

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Near San Francisco, Gina Cooper and her son, then 12, had to vacate their home in 2012 when her wages of under $10 an hour became insufficient to pay the rent. After a few months as nomads, they found shelter and support with Home & Hope, an interfaith program in Burlingame, California, and stayed there five months before Cooper, 44, saved enough to be able to afford housing on her own.

"It was a painful time for my son," Cooper said. "On the way to school, he would be crying, 'I hate this.'"

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In mostly affluent Santa Barbara, the Transition House homeless shelter is kept busy with families unable to afford housing of their own. Executive director Kathleen Baushke said that even after her staff gives clients money for security deposits and rent, they go months without finding a place to live.

"Landlords aren't desperate," she said. "They won't put a family of four in a two-bedroom place because they can find a single professional who will take it."

She said neither federal nor state housing assistance nor incentives for developers to create low-income housing have kept pace with demand.

"We need more affordable housing or we need to pay people $25 an hour," she said. "The minimum wage isn't cutting it."

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Shahera Hyatt, of the California Homeless Youth Project, says most of the homeless schoolchildren in her state aren't living in shelters.

"It's often one family living in extreme poverty going to live with another family that was already in extreme poverty," she said. "Kids have slept in closets and kitchens and bathrooms and other parts of the house that have not been meant for sleeping."

"60 Minutes" reported on the problem of homeless children in 2011, interviewing families in Florida that were living in school buses. CBS News' Scott Pelley looked at the crisis of homelessness in the Orlando area, specifically at some of the youngest victims of these recent tough times.

The children featured in the profile spoke about hunger and the difficult decisions their families face to make ends meet, such as choosing food over electricity.

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