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A vigorous effort to house the homeless has been countered somewhat by a sluggish economy.
The federal government and local communities have greatly increased the number of beds available to the homeless over the last four years, either through emergency shelters or through government-subsidized apartments and houses. But the struggling economy contributed to the number of homeless people in the United States remaining stable between January 2011 and January 2012.
The biggest drop occurred with veterans while homelessness within families increased slightly, according to the latest national estimates.
Each January, thousands of workers with local governments and nonprofit agencies fan out across the country to count the number of homeless people living in shelters and on the streets during a specific 24-hour period. The latest count estimates the number of homeless at 633,782, according to the Housing and Urban Development Department. The year before, the number stood at slightly more than 636,000.
Within those numbers was a more encouraging trend: The percentage of homeless veterans as well as those homeless for more than a year each dropped by about 7 percent. Agencies are focusing their dollars on getting the long-term homeless into permanent housing and then providing them with support services such as counseling and job training.
The Obama administration has set of goal of eliminating veterans' homelessness and chronic homelessness by the end of 2015.
"This report continues a trend that clearly indicates we are on the right track in the fight to end homelessness among veterans," said Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki.
Advocates welcomed the numbers, but said they showed there's still a long way to go to meet the administration's goal.
"It's great that we made progress ... but we're obviously not going to end it by 2015 at this pace," said Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Advocates fear rising homelessness among young vets
Mark Johnston, an acting assistant secretary at Housing and Urban Development, said the stable homeless rate during tough economic times was viewed as encouraging news.
Johnston said the federal government is spending about $1.9 billion to house the homeless. The amount has steadily increased over the years, with a particular boost coming from the 2009 economic stimulus package.
That investment would probably need to grow to about $20 billion to provide housing for all of the homeless during a one-year period, Johnston said. Officials know that's unlikely, so the focus is on targeting the money where it's having the greatest effect.
They said more money is being directed to subsidize the cost of permanent housing. HUD provides that money while Veterans Affairs steps in with other services, such as drug and alcohol counseling and job training.
Roman said the investment helps cut government costs elsewhere.
"People who don't have stable housing create all kinds of other costs. Their health problems are worse. It's pretty much impossible to keep a job, and it has all kinds of snowballing effects," Roman said. "So these are smart public investments, and we need to keep going to reach these goals."
Officials said most homeless people only need shelter for a few days or weeks. They tend to rely on the more than 400,000 beds provided through emergency shelters and transitional housing.
More than half of the homeless people who used such temporary help are part of families using those services. The homelessness among people in families increased by 1.4 percent in the latest count.
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Jobs reduce homelessness. A simple concept Obama doesn't understand.
You need a permanent address to get welfare or food stamps. With Obama adding 15.2 million people to the food stamps rolls since he took office, he's lucky the homeless numbers aren't included in those welfare and food stamp numbers or his failures would be monumental.
Christmas in Obamaville. And yet we want more of this??? WTF? I guess it's true, some really do think Obama is Santa Clause and they fail to realize that in reality, he's the Grinch but they've had their expectations beat down so much, they don't know if they're coming or going.
Seems odd to me that they are saying the counting takes place in January of every year. Did they just get this figures this weekend? Will they be updated next week?
If we tax the rich some more will this problem go away? HELL NO!! Will anything really improve? HELL NO!!
Obama doesn't understand that jobs reduce homelessness? Can you document that contention, "what"? The contrary FACT is that more jobs have been created in the past 4 years than in the entire prior 8 years. All of those new people on food stamps are the ones who lost their jobs with the Bush economic crash - but you know that.
Well, to be fair Rick, the jobs that have been created the past 4 years were mostly part time, low wage type jobs. When the jobs don't allow you to make ends meet, should they really count as a positive?
Rick-881466,
Something must be up with your "FACT". Unemployment with has never been under 7.7% for the Obama's entire term. The entire time with George W. as President only included 2 months of unemployment over 7%
Rick
Congress controls the purse strings in this country. Since January 2007 the dems have had control. It has been on their watch that unemployment has gone sky high. You libbies just can't face the FACTS, can you?
What did the democrats promise us in 2006??? They promised to fix everything that was going wrong if we elected them. We elected them to a very strong majority, then we gave them the White House. How have things been going since January 2007?
JH You are correct. I remember 2006, and the democrats big complaint was the wars, they promised to end them. They ended one war but caused the whole region of the middle east to be in turmoil. The trouble in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen and other countries are a direct result of Obama foreign policy, a complete failure.
The economy was in great shape in 2006. Nancy and Harry screwed that up in less then 2 yrs. Doubled the deficit and sent the country on a downward spiral.
What a bunch of @!$%#ing retards! This article seems like a magnet for idiots and hatemongers. @!$%# y'all!
Rick its time to come back to reality.
In September it was getting reported that the Holiday temporary hiring had started. Then in October it was reported that the temporary hiring was going full swing. In November Obama's administration announced that 117,000 jobs were added in October. Then last week it was announced that 146,000 were added in November.
What won't be reported nor be reduced from the Obama job numbers is the 99.9% of those temporary jobs that are lost after the holidays. We go through this with the summer hiring season too.
This practice of adding temporary summer and holiday hiring to the Obama jobs numbers has been going on for each of the 4 years Obama has been in Office and will continue for the next four years because Obama declared that they were jobs that were created on his watch.
Anyone with half a brain knows that temporary summer and holidays hiring aren't a real representation of job growth, but a deception to fool people like you. The shame is that it works on the uninformed Obama supporters like yourself.
An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching. ~Mahatma Gandhi
The one thing you can guarantee changed was the Millions spent and number of Federal Employee's Obama hired to address the "Homeless" issue!
Impeach Obama in 2012 and Imprison Clinton for Criminal Conspiracy to Cover Up the Murder of an American Ambassador, Intentionally Lying to the American People Secret CIA Prisons and Supporting Al Qaeda in Benghazi-Gate and now in Syria!
None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.~Johann von Goethe
Excellent post.
While it would be wonderful if they could, they will never do away with homelessness. There are some homeless who don’t want homes, for various reasons – addictions, mental illness, just don’t want the responsibility of a home, etc. One of my relatives tried to help those who camped out by his business. He gave them jobs (they would show up a couple of days and as soon as they were paid, they disappeared, showing up a few days later reeking of their drug of choice. Some he took home with him (much to his wife’s
dismay) to let them get cleaned up and gave them clothes, food, etc.; on cold
nights, he offered them a bed. However, they were all adamant - they didn’t want homes. For others, the “beds” they refer to in shelters are just too dangerous and scary and they find they are safer on the streets.
Yes, more jobs would help, but jobs that pay a living wage and most of the people need training and help to get those jobs. However, the government has never been and will never be the answer to the problem. Most of homeless don’t need a handout in and of its self, they need real, one on one help from people who are prepared to be caring but tough and willing to hold them accountable. What they don’t need is to be coddled and babied. Freebies and dependence never helped anyone.
Expect more of the same for another four years. Mr Obama's economic policies do nothing to promote job creation. His only plan is to tax the rich which by itself does nothing to create jobs. Oh well.
You are a lemming.
....more of the same????? Obozo will easily double down on the number of poor and homeless because he has no clue about economics and his mindless minions will continue to be led around by their ignorant noses....
nycguy...Oh ha ha ha, calling the president "Obozo" is so clever and hilarious, and attacking his economic policies while providing no links or proof that they are behind the homeless problem is so convincing. And, yes, of course, it's the liberals who are he mindless minions and not the republicans, who blindly signed Norquist's little agreement, every one of them.
ECF....how dumb....FYI... the POTUS owns the economy and I'm sorry, but you say Obozo has an "economic policy"....LOL....where would that happen to be and what exactly is his "policy"????
But yet, we're more than willing to give money to countries who clearly hate us and our value system. What's wrong with this picture???
"Homeless." Not a word seen very often in the past four years.......but after the re immaculation of HIM......time to dole out some bucks for some new "programs."....You know, like LBJ's "War on Poverty."....that ended poverty in America, right?.....what is it up to know...$5 of taxpayer money, for every dollar that the "poor" actually recieve? Gee, that's efficient......but then, our gubment is a specialist in efficiency.
F you, you racist pig.
I don't see the racist comment. People who yell racist racist at every turn has gotten to be laughable and you can't be taken seriously anymore.
In counting the number of homeless, there are places which people don't go to count the homeless. Often abandoned factories and other businesses, vans,cars and buses. Railroad yards, under bridges, warehouse districts and underground tunnels normally not accessible to people. Far away from prying eyes which would get them in trouble with the local law. I suspect a fair number get missed each year.
If Obama had focused on making sure banks had actually helped people stay in their homes by refinancing their mortgages, instead of just bailing out the banks, more families would still have their homes. Instead of ending up in homeless shelters.But that wasn't his agenda.He went ahead and bailed them out twice. All without any conditions on actually meeting the needs of the customers who lost so much in the end.
When you breed dependence, you get it. People waiting for someone to take care of them. Why hustle? It's too overwhelming. Better the government care for me.
It's actually the super wealthy that end up benefiting from the government offering affordable housing incentive programs. No one realizes this, though, so people who are against the program come off as "mean."
A large percentage of the homeless are those who used to be housed in state hospitals because of various mental issues. The government started closing all the state hospitals in the 1980s, and those who were thrown out on the street will always be homeless.
The issue of homelessness is not being studied and therefore we don't know the cause of most of it. But loss of jobs and loss of homes have made a major contribution to the numbers of homeless. Then there is the lack of accessible health care that can be ruinous financially.
What programs? Don't homeless poeple need jobs? Arn't we trying to give every immigrant a job before an American gets a shot at the job? 1.3 million immigrants are given green cards per year since 1998. Millions more are allowed to stay illegally in cities and work on farms as long as they don't kill anyone or I should say "get caught killing anyone." Of course we have poor and homeless.
C. Moakler...Yes, by all means, let's close our borders entirely to immigrants, especially the engineers, doctors, etc. coming from India and other nations. Because it's not like immigrants have ever done anything for America, other than building and sustaining it. And before you say "your" ancestors came here in a different time and brought wealth and a skill set to the new world, I've heard it before. Not every immigrant is a drug dealer or terrorist.
Excellent post.
And we all know Trickle Down Economics has been a major success. For the people at the top maybe. The majority of the homeless are there because of drugs or alcohol or mental illness. You can create a job for them but you can't MAKE them work.
Flamingo Road...I fully agree with you regarding trickle-down economics. Didn't work in the 80s, will never work. But I think you need to access some updated information about the causes of homelessness. It may have been true 50 years ago that "bums" were drunks or mentally ill, but now you have whole families in shelters, and many, many homeless vets. It's not the same world.
The only American companies making profits today is the gun companies.
With the amount of money we send as aid overseas...how can we have so many homeless people here?
The U.S. government drains social programs for Americans to hand out privileges to the foreign born. That's why we have homelessness.
dsd
Trying to lay the blame for homelessness on the President or on lack of jobs is just ignorance. There are an abundance of services available for those who become homeless due to loss of a job; People who want to find help don't have to live on the street for long. The fact is that many homeless people are living on the streets because they chose that lifestyle. A lot of them have chronic psychological problems that make it difficult for them to live within the boundries of normal society, so they move to the fringe where they can escape the pressures to conform to social expectations of what "normal" is. Average people might consider it normal to hold down a job and pay rent every month, but for someone who suffers from schizophrenia, chronic depression or some other serious of disorder, that is too much to handle. They just want to make it through the day, maybe get a little food to eat and find a place to crash that night. If there were low paying jobs available for them, they would still prefer homelessness to the pressures of conforming to an employer's expectations or having to pay some monthly bills. The real need is for counseling and support groups to help homeless people become ready to make changes in their lifestyle. A lot could be accomplished towards this end if people would quit arguing about whether or not the President is creating enough jobs, and turn their focus to providing the kind of help the homeless really need.
Lots of people living in their car and going to a regualar job at the same time ya know. Met a lady who lived in her truck with her two children. She couldn't afford housing AND food so she drove them to school. The kids got a shower at gym and she showered at the YWCA. But they bought food that didn't need to be cooked and stuff like that. They folded seats down and slept in the truck at night. She only made about $1000 a month before taxes. But because she worked she didnt get food stamps. So your saying she would be better served if she didn't work?
gbard1...See my response to Flamingo Road above. Don't assume that the homeless are mentally ill, and don't assume that the mentally ill can't handle a job, family and normal life. I am positive you work with people who suffer from depression, bipolar disorder or even schizophrenia without you even being aware of it, because they seek treatment and take their medication. Don't underestimate the mentally ill, we are exactly the same as you. Just sometimes we have to work a little harder.
That's a crock. Obama is responsible for the condition of the American people. He has continued the Bush policies and the U.S. tax dollars are being use in illegal wars and the bailout of criminals in banking. The horror is that the U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate of any industrialized nation. IMPEACH OBAMA
It's a disgrace to see war vets homeless and jobless. Soon we will have to out source the military to fight our enemies.
The U.S. military is handing out U.S. citizenship around as part payment for serving in the illegal wars. That's what the Romans did in their endless wars. The proper term is mercenaries. When American citizens longer want the wars and refuse to fight, the military recruits mercenaries abroad.
Executives create jobs. Lower taxes on business creates jobs. So it's not just Obama that creates jobs...it's the entire package. Government working together and executives stop worrying about their own pocket books and start hiring people. Because eventually there won't be anyone left making money to buy their products.
The word 'homeless' is sometimes a term used rather loosely. Take for example the 'homeless' guy the cop in NYC boughta $100 pair of skechers for. He had a home address as it turned out. He chooses to stay on the streets due to his mental illness and no amount of help offered will change his stance.
There's also panhandler types who beg for money then walk around the corner to their BMW to go home for the night after a day of 'work'. There's a difference between the truly homeless and those seeking handouts but it's hard to tell the difference sometimes.
My biggest concern is escalation. We'll soon be providing, in one way or another, health care for the homeless (and the poor). Efforts at providing preventive care as a means of minimizing the need for providing care for chronic conditions will likely fail in the case of the homeless because they will not have the means to do the "simple" things they need to do to stay healthy.
Besides shelter's part in preventive care, there's the matter of adequate nutrition. Without that, you're not likely to remain healthy. So the next step after providing shelter will be providing nutritious food.
After shelter and food have been provided, there's the matter of clothing. Without adequate clothing to protect from the elements, you can't stay healthy. The same is true for having adequate security.
We'll then be in a position of providing health care, shelter, food, clothing, and security for any of our citizens who need it. I fear there will be an ever escalating number who will understand that they don't have to lift a finger to provide the necessities of life for themselves. The government will provide. So why work?
It won't take too long before the burden of providing life's necessities for those who don't work, whatever the reason, is more than working society can bear. At that point the whole system will collapse. The magnitude of this impending catastrophe will make our present situation of homelessness and poverty look like a Sunday picnic.
I hope I'm wrong about this and that our ever increasing efforts to provide the minimum of life's necessities for all our people succeeds. The project needs to be monitored closely to detect significant movement toward the calamity I see coming. If I'm right, then we'll need to at least change what we're doing and adopt a plan that may yield greater success even if it means we'll need to be ruthless in its application.
Most people want more than just food and shelter. Especially when its not even enough to actually live on.
As far as im concerned, food and shelter is a human right. And when the government took away peoples right to homestead, they took on the responsibility of feeding and housing anyone who cant find work. In the old days, people would squat somewhere and have a garden, raise a few chickens, etc. Not costing anyone anything. The poor did not invent welfare. Land owners and the government did.
Leaving people to starve and be homeless, also puts them in a position where they must take any job at any wage, or die. That is slavery.
It's gonna get worse.
Low income housing, lots of it. Thats what is needed.
A building boom across the country to build low cost housing, would do much for the economy, and help millions of poor families. Including the homeless. More rentals, means cheaper rents. Cheaper rents puts more people in a homes. Rent is the number one cost for people, often eating up over 50% of their income, sometimes close to all their income. You ask any low income person what their biggest cost is, they will likely tell you its their rent. Unless they are living in their car.
The other thing that is needed specifically regarding some homeless. Mental health services, many are sick. Along with other services, to help them off the street, and stay off. Without it being like a prison halfway house. Sick people shouldnt be left to live under bridges.. If that isnt being a danger to ones self, what is?
More housing , would help drive down the cost of living for everyone. It is strangleholds on land and housing that have driven them up so high to start with. Its the same with resources.
During the techno boom times of the '90s, when Indian programmers were being imported by the bucketful and, if you tripped on a Silicon Valley sidewalk you fell on an employer desperate for employees, the number of homeless in the Bay Area increased.
This was due to:
1. craziness, with them having the right to roam free because Reagan was forced to let them out--thereby rendering many of the hospitals as financially unsustainable. (Why were they let out? Because '70s liberal loonies said, "Insanity is not a crime.")
2. drugs and alcohol, made acceptable by the indulgent youth of the late '60s and '70s.
3. welfare, which allowed a class of people to exist, born often to teens, with no work ethic in the family
4. glorification of thug culture and the treatment of women as "ho's"--with no responsibility on the part of the father. Excuses made for criminals of all sorts.
5. people wanting to be free to live outside without having to get up in the morning and go to work. They don't want housing--SF creates more and more housing and people LEAVE it to go back to the streets.
LBJ's Great Society ruined a lot of good things about America but more specifically ruined the black family and black neighborhoods.
You can't retrain people who want to be on the streets and most of the homeless are exactly that.....they won't change. If they really wanted to change they would do something about it. My experience of working at a homeless shelter was a real eye opener - they like living on the streets, collecting their social security checks every month, spending all of it on drugs and prostitutes (90% of the homeless in my city are men - women work harder at improving their situations). They spend 2 weeks at the shelter and then 2 weeks going through their free money at taxpayer expense. They come in faithfully 3 times every day for their meals and complain if it isn't something that they want. I can no longer work in a homeless shelter as I realized that this just makes the problem worse.....
m-612920
just curious, what city?
When did being homeless become a topic for bashing the government? Geez! Read the posts from the people who know about homeless people. Unemployment is just a tiny part of the problem. Many of them are mentally ill. Some are alcoholics and drug addicts. There are a small percentage of homeless that you could say, "but for the grace of God that could be me". If the government is failing the homeless it is because the government doesn't know what to do with the mentally ill and addicts.
lady
I was homeless and it wasn't because of the reason you claimed. I was homeless because I couldn't find a job and when I did find a job, it didn't pay enough for me to put a roof over my head.
With real unemployment of over 14% and with 50% of our population living in or at the edge of poverty, homelessness is no longer what you think it is.
It would help if you got informed before you post. It will help you from making a fool out of yourself.
what, doesn't explain what happened during the boom times. Examples of one are just that. Avoiding generalizing will help keep you from making a fool out of yourself.
Did you have a family to go home too but they lived in a part of the country you wanted to leave? So many of the homeless in CA want to take advantage of the nice weather and relaxed, drug-accepting lifestyle. They don't want to go back to Iowa and soil their hands with something like farming.
You seem educated. Did you have a job up until 2008?
This government bailed out the banks from their fraud and usury. Then the banks continued their fraud and theft with illegal robo-signed foreclosures. The U.S. attorney general Eric Holder has been either incompetent or criminal in his failure to prosecute the criminals on Wall Street. Wall Street and the Bush/Obama regime is responsible for the massive U.S. homelessness. These are facts. Get over it.
See, you're right about that. When Obama bailed out the banks, he neglected to put restrictions on the money, didn't he? He let his buddies the executives act like a Mongol horde, awarding themselves perks and pensions and bonuses.
But that's separate from the problem of chronic homelessness. Read about San Francisco, where the homeless population has remained stagnant despite spending $40,000,000 and creating a lot of housing. These people WANT to be free outside, panhandling and frightening children.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2011/10/san-francisco-homeless-population-remains-stagnant-despite-city-spending
The more the government pays people to be poor, the more poor people we have. Why is his a surprise?
Amen.
End welfare now! (except for the elderly and truly disabled.)
What a vicious post. If the government would give U.S. cittizens the same support it gives refugees there would be no homelessness.
If the government stopped giving support to "refugees," the average working American would be much better off.
It is cruel and bizarre that the U.S. makes its own people homeless and unqualified for any form of public aid and at the same time brings 'refugees' from around the world and provides them with homes, good income, health care, jobs and education. The U.S. political parties have disenfranchised American citizens to hand out privileges to foreigners. IMPEACH OBAMA