The men who frequent City Union Mission's emergency homeless shelter in downtown Kansas City don't have much but for the last two years, they've been  quietly raising money to help defray the medical expenses of a local girl with leukemia.

And last week, Payton Adams, 4, and her mother visited the shelter for the first time and met some of the men who have been helping the family.

"It is amazing how these guys who have very little, how pennies up to dollars, dollars add up to hundreds. We have sometimes come out of here with $500, $300, whatever they have," LeiLani Adams, Payton's mom, told local NBC affiliate KSHB. "It has really been a blessing."

Officials at the shelter said the fundraising project was started by Johnny Evans, the evening manager at the shelter.

Evans, a former shelter resident who now works there, is also a security guard at the daycare center that Payton attends and got to know the family there, said Laurie Grant, City Union Mission's media coordinator.

Grant said the shelter staff had no idea about the fundraising project until recently, when a member of the staff overheard Evans talking about it.

"That's how we realized it was going on," Grant said. "There can be negative stereotypes about the homeless, but with your clients you get to know them and you realize they want to help and have a purpose and be part of something bigger. It wasn't just pennies and nickles and dimes — there were dollars in there."

The men at the shelter have been collecting the donations in large plastic water jugs. Last week marked the third time the men have delivered a jug of donations to the family.

Tyler Sizemore / The News-Times via AP

A house belonging to the Barth family in Newtown, Conn., is seen on March 28, the day after it was destroyed by fire.

A Newtown, Conn., home destroyed by a fire this week was owned by a couple whose children survived the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in December.

Wednesday afternoon's fire left Hans and Audra Barth and their three children homeless, according to Monsignor Robert Wise, of St. Rose of Lima Church. The American Red Cross has put them up in a hotel and the church is collecting donations for the family.

Two of their children attended Sandy Hook Elementary School, including a first-grader in teacher Kaitlin Roig's classroom, the Danbury News-Times reported. Roig has been called a hero for barricading her students in a bathroom as the shooter killed 20 other first-graders and six educators.

For more, visit NBCConnecticut.com

Friends say the family lost everything in the fire, and their pet dog and several baby chickens died.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

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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Updated at 5:25 p.m. ET: LOS ANGELES -- A scrawny Georgia teen who was discovered at a bus station told police his abusive stepfather gave him $200 and a list of homeless shelters before he was put on a bus to Los Angeles on this 18th birthday, authorities said Thursday.

Retired Los Angeles police Sgt. Joe Gonzalez was working security at a downtown bus station Sept. 11 when he spotted Mitch Comer, who stood just over 5 feet tall, weighed 87 pounds and looked much younger, the LAPD said in a news release Thursday.

The teen told Gonzalez his stepfather declared that he was now a man before putting him on a bus.

Paul Matthew Comer is seen in an undated photo provided by the Paulding County Sheriff's Office.

Investigators in Paulding County, Ga., planned to search at the home where authorities allege the teen was kept in such seclusion that his two younger sisters in the same house did not know what he looked like.

"The sisters haven't seen the brother in over two years," Paulding County sheriff's Cpl. Ashley Henson said. "They didn't even know what color his hair was."

Stepfather Paul Comer and mother Sheila Comer face charges of false imprisonment and cruelty to children, Paulding County jail records show. They were being held without bond.

Police described him as "pale" and "gaunt" and said they believed he was around 12 or 13 years old at first. Concerned about his age, they decided to investigate further.

Sheila Comer is seen in an undated photo provided by the Paulding County Sheriff's Office.

"The LAPD officer said his skin was translucent, that he was obviously malnourished," Los Angeles District Attorney Dick Donovan told WSB-TV in Atlanta. 

The 18-year-old told authorities that he had suffered years of abuse. After removing him from school in the eighth grade, his stepfather shut him in a room, he said.

The youth was fed only small amounts of food and forced to hold a grueling disciplinary position for eight hours a day with the top of his head against a wall, his fingers interlaced behind his head, and his feet raised off the ground.

'Heartbreaking circumstances'
The teen told police he had two younger sisters still living at home, but he did not know his address. LAPD contacted local Paulding County, Georgia, sheriff's deputies, who tracked down his stepfather and mother and took them in for questioning.

The parents were subsequently arrested on child abuse and false imprisonment charges. Detectives also put the teen's younger sisters, aged 11 and 13, into protective custody with Paulding County Children's Services.

After staying in a Los Angeles board and care home, the 18-year-old flew to Georgia on Wednesday to help in the investigation and legal proceedings against his parents.

"I am greatly relieved and thankful that one of our retired officers brought this victim to our attention and started the process to uncover these heartbreaking circumstances," Police Chief Charlie Beck said in a statement.

Dion Walker and Mea Smith, who live near the family in Dallas, Ga., told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution their children had played with the teen's sisters. 

"Maybe, when the young girls would stare at us, were they trying to say something?" Walker said according to the Journal-Constitution. "Should we have noticed?"

Monica Moore, an investigator with the Paulding County district attorney's office, accompanied the 18-year-old home from California and described him to WSB-TV as small and very timid, but exceedingly polite.

"I made sure that he knew that ... once he came here he had a lot of people here helping," she told WSB-TV.

Donovan told the station his office struggled to find an agency willing to take in the teen because he is legally an adult, but a local family agreed to house him.

NBC News's Sevil Omer and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The family of a Queens, N.Y., woman missing since Sunday fears she may be in serious danger.

Police are searching for 26-year-old Rajwinder Kaur, who was last seen Sunday night at her home on 198 Street in Hollis. She left at about 8 p.m. to volunteer at a homeless shelter in Brooklyn and never returned home.

Later that night, Kaur's sister Gurpreet received a text message from her sister's phone.

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"It said, 'The girl with this phone is dead,'" Gurpreet Kaur told NBC 4 New York.

"It's too disturbing," she said. "At first when I saw it, I thought it was probably like a joke."

But she knew her sister wouldn't write a message like that.

Police said Kaur's phone was tracked to Brooklyn Sunday night, then shut off. They were in the process of getting a search warrant to go through her emails, law enforcement sources said.

Kaur reportedly sold her family possessions on eBay before disappearing, sources said. Her family said she had become more spiritual after a trip to India last winter, but don't believe she would have disappeared abruptly.

Family members have posted fliers around the neighborhood and in Brooklyn near places where Kaur volunteered. They are offering a $1,000 reward for information.

"I hope this is an awful joke and they find her," said neighbor Nicole Iglesias.

Anyone with information on Kaur is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS or at nypdcrimestoppers.com.

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