On December 27 the Brandenton Herald in central Florida ran an article on newly gathered data in Manatee County:

Families account for almost half of the homeless population in Manatee County - and the number of households in trouble is on the rise, homeless advocates warn. That includes the most vulnerable segment of the homeless population: women with very young children, said Adell Erozer, director of the Manatee Community Coalition on Homelessness.

The problem, Erozer said, is twofold:

Many parents - especially single moms with children - are afraid of stepping forward for help out of fear authorities will take away their children. And many homeless families go unnoticed because of the federal government's ever-narrowing definition of homelessness.

In its annual homeless survey next month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will count only unsheltered people living in cars, parks, abandoned buildings, on the streets or sidewalks or people staying in emergency shelters or transitional housing for homeless people who were once on the street.

Manatee County has no shelter facilities for single women without children who are not in an abusive situation, and only very limited family shelter capacity at the Salvation Army.

'That means HUD will miss the families doubling up in motel rooms, or the homeless people in jail or in mental health facilities,' said Erozer.

The count determines how much federal funding Manatee homeless agencies will receive.

And funding is all the more crucial, advocates warn, because the caseload is exploding. The data support their fear: The Salvation Army of Bradenton has seen a 30 percent increase over the last year in the number of people seeking help.

Most of those new clients are families - many headed by single women, new to the streets, said Ellen Potrikus, who screens applicants for emergency assistance.

From Jan. 1 though Nov. 30, 8,904 people sought help from the Salvation Army, compared to 6,849 for the same period the year before.

. . . A few years ago, most people seeking rental or utility assistance were paying an average of $500-per-month rent, according to Salvation Army records.

Today, the average rent of those seeking help in Manatee County is $800.

Potrikus lays the blame on a lack of affordable housing and rising rents. Some at-risk families are paying rents as high as $1,300 a month.

BRADENTON - Hit with car repairs and medical bills, Leticia Longoria could not make her rent in November.

Faced with the terrifying prospect of life on the streets with two children, Longoria, sought help at the Salvation Army family shelter.

Two months later, she's still there, trying to save for a place of their own. Longoria, who makes $7.25 an hour, can stay as long as she is willing to work hard to get out.

Longoria's situation is typical, said Ashley Canesse, Salvation Army spokeswoman. As wages have not kept up with housing costs, affordable housing options decline. Those forces, Canesse said, result in longer shelter stays, which lower the number of people the shelter can serve.

Five years ago the average family shelter stay was three weeks. By 2006, the average stay stretched seven months.

Posted by Marc Brazeau at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a few articles that came our way while we were getting ready to get this blog under way.

From The Chicago Tribune we get an excellent look at "doubling up" in Chicago:

If the problems of people like Elashune Calhoun were taken into account, Chicago's homeless population would more than triple to 21,000 on a typical night, a new report released Thursday argues.

Calhoun and her seven children were evicted from their Englewood home in May, just as she lost her clerk's job at a clothing store.

Since then, they have been living with Calhoun's mother, Valerie Griffin, in an often-crowded four-bedroom house nearby. That places her in a category of families who are "doubling up" with relatives and friends because of a lack of affordable housing options in the city, the non-profit Chicago Coalition for the Homeless said.

. . . The coalition estimates that more than 8,100 children in the city are living in "doubled up" circumstances, with some 1,800 more who live inside shelters on a typical night. That conclusion was reached through data culled from Chicago Public Schools, the city's latest inventory of its shelter population and a 2003 University of Illinois at Chicago study, the group said.

A total of 73,656 people in the city were homeless at one time or another during a 12-month period that began in July 2005, the group's study found.

"This comes from a lot of places," including job losses and unforeseen medical problems, Shurna said. "It comes from an overall lack of affordable housing in the city."

City officials dispute the report's numbers. Under a 10-year "Plan to End Homelessness" launched in 2003, the city has allocated $18.9 million per year toward homeless prevention, social services and the creation of single room occupancy residences and other types of affordable housing, said Molly Sullivan, spokeswoman for the city Department of Housing.

Families targeted for those resources are identified under requirements by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which defines a homeless person as someone without a fixed place to sleep or who is regularly spending the night inside a shelter or some other similar institution.

"We think this enables us to focus our immediate resources on the ones who are most vulnerable," Sullivan said. "They're not living with families or friends. They literally have no place to live."

The coalition report relies on a looser definition of homelessness promoted by the federal Department of Education, which seeks to address some of the classroom-related issues for students caused by housing problems.

This Christmas, Elashune Calhoun and her seven children, ages 9 to 16, will be staying with her mother in Englewood but the occasion will lack much joy. "There are no Christmas lights, no Christmas tree, no presents," says Calhoun, 32. Calhoun may have a roof over her head but she and her children are essentially homeless; they were evicted from their own rented house last spring after Calhoun lost her job. She had to take off time to care for her 10-year-old asthmatic son and her employer let her go. "I don't fault him, but my children come first," Calhoun says. The lack of income led to the eviction.

The City of Chicago does not count Calhoun as one of its homeless. It includes only those who are staying in city-funded shelters or are sleeping out in the open on Chicago streets or are spotted on the CTA. The last census of homeless people was taken on Jan. 27, 2005, and the city counted 6,715. But "doubling up," like she does with her mother, "is homelessness," Calhoun argues. "I don't have the financial stability to go out on my own and pay market rent."

. . . Mayor Daley says he wants to end homelessness. But clearly, if the numbers collected by UIC and the Coalition for the Homeless are right -- and they seem more meticulous in gathering statistics than the city -- he has a long way to go. It is impossible to fix the problem unless you know the extent of it. The coalition would like Daley to spend $55 million a year on affordable housing, but that number may be impossible for the city when it is under financial restraint. The issue, though, needs to be studied more thoroughly. The coalition says for the entire fiscal year ending June 30, the homeless population in Chicago was 73,656 -- close to the population of Evanston.

The mayor is concerned about the performance of Chicago schools, but if such a huge proportion of students are homeless -- the Board of Education figures 8,461 of its students are living in "doubled-up" situations with friends or family -- then how can these children be expected to excel in school? Calhoun says two of her children are in special-ed classes, and she just prays that somehow the family will find their way over the next year. "I'm just counting on the Lord."

Posted by Marc Brazeau at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)