This year, requests for emergency shelter increased
   26 percent in Trenton; 25 percent in Kansas City, Mo.;
   22 percent in Chicago; 20 percent in Denver;
   and 20 percent in New Orleans.

   An increasing proportion of the homeless are families
   with children.


http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/18/national/18HOME.html?todaysheadl
ines=&pagewanted=print

New York Times,  December 18, 2001

New Wave of the Homeless Floods Cities' Shelters
By PAM BELLUCK

With unemployment rising and housing costs still high, cities
around the country are experiencing a new and sudden wave of
homelessness. Shelters are overflowing, and more people this year
are sleeping on floors in dingy social service centers, living in
cars or spending nights on the streets.

In New York, Boston and other cities, homelessness is at record
levels, a consequence of a faltering economy that has crumbled
even further after the Sept. 11 attacks.

A survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors released last week found
that requests for emergency shelter in 27 cities had increased an
average of 13 percent over last year. The report said the
increases were 26 percent in Trenton; 25 percent in Kansas City,
Mo.; 22 percent in Chicago; 20 percent in Denver; and 20 percent
in New Orleans.

An unusual confluence of factors seems to be responsible for the
surge. Housing prices, which soared in the expansion of the
1990's, have not gone down, even though the economy has tumbled. A
stream of layoffs has newly unemployed people taking low-wage jobs
that might have otherwise gone to the poor. Benefits for welfare
recipients are expiring under government-imposed deadlines. And
charitable donations to programs that help the disadvantaged are
down considerably, officials around the country said, because of
the economy and the outpouring of donations for people affected by
Sept. 11.

"This is an unprecedented convergence of calamities," said Xavier
De Souza Briggs, an assistant professor of public policy at the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. "It's really a
crisis."

More than half the cities surveyed by the mayors' group reported
that in the last year people had remained homeless longer, an
average of six months.

There is no total number for the homeless nationwide. Experts said
it was difficult to compare the situation with statistics in
previous decades, because counting methods have improved. Yet,
several experts said they believed that the increases reported by
cities like Boston and Chicago reflected a national trend.

"My impression is there is more homelessness now than there was
20 years ago," Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings
Institution, said, adding that he believed that economic factors
were not the sole explanation.

"I think that there must be a greater segment of our population
that has tenuous connections to family and friends, and therefore
has fewer resources to fall back on when something very bad
happens like when they lose their job," he said.

An increasing proportion of the homeless are families with
children, compared with the chronically homeless who often have
serious mental illness or substance abuse problems. Requests for
shelter from families with children increased in three-quarters of
the cities surveyed. In more than half, families had to be broken
up to be accommodated in shelters.

Some newly homeless people have jobs but do not earn enough to
allow use of a home. Low-cost housing is so tight that one-third
of the vouchers for the Section 8 subsidized-housing program are
being returned unused, according to the Department of Housing and
Urban Development.

Several experts and advocates for the homeless predicted that the
number of homeless people would rise in coming months as states
and cities, facing budget crises and burdened with security costs,
scaled back on financing for housing and other programs that help
keep people from becoming homeless, like rent assistance and
health care.

A senior policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless in New
York, Patrick Markee, said: "Now, especially since Sept. 11, we're
seeing the recession effect, low-wage workers who were just
holding on, messengers, people who work in restaurants turning up
at our door. We're going to see it get worse over the next few
months."

In Rhode Island, the state is dropping a $5 million housing
program from its budget. Yet this month, a crush of homeless
people forced the opening of a shelter in an old convent in
Warwick, the first new shelter for the homeless in the state in 10
years. This year, 120 families with children have slept on the
floor of Travelers Aid, a social service center in Providence that
is not a shelter.

In New York, the number of people in shelters, 29,802 as of last
month, is the highest ever. According to the Coalition for the
Homeless, the number of families in shelters has grown 50 percent
in three years, to 6,669, while the percentage of children in
shelters has risen 60 percent, to 12,576. Mr. Markee said 1,500
families were being housed in welfare hotels, three times as many
as three years ago.

In Boston, officials conducted a census of the homeless on Dec. 10
and found 6,001 homeless people, a record, said Kelley Cronin,
director of the Emergency Shelter Commission. Ms. Cronin added
that the number of people on the street, 277, was also the highest
on record.

Chicago reported in the mayors' survey that the number of people
who were homeless or receiving emergency assistance to keep them
from becoming homeless had jumped, to 19,421 from 15,682 last
year.

In a school district in Sacramento, Liane Ramirez, who works with
homeless families, said she had already seen twice as many
families living in their cars as she had seen in the previous few
years combined.

"We feel like we're seeing a lot more first-time scared-to-death
homeless," Ms. Ramirez said. "And we're looking at working
homeless, not just welfare homeless."

Some aspects of the problem seem clearly related to the terrorist
attacks.

Before Sept. 11, the Boston Rescue Mission, a large shelter, had a
$90,000 contract with Delta Air Lines to clean the carpets of its
planes. The contract, which the airline had been planning to
double, employed 30 homeless people from the shelter, said John
Samaan, the president of the mission. After Sept. 11, Delta halved
the contract instead, putting one-third of the workers out of
work.

In Portland, Ore., the Goose Hollow Family Shelter, the largest
family shelter in the city in the winter, usually receives
thousands of dollars in donations in September, said Chuck Currie,
its director. This year, it received one contribution, for $100.

"I've heard other agencies say contributions have dropped 20
percent to 70 percent," Mr. Currie said.

Programs that provide services to the homeless are also bracing
for the state budget cuts.

In Illinois, homeless services are highly likely to be affected by
state plans for a $485 million budget cut.

"It's going to send programs like ours into a tailspin," said
Diane Nilan, an administrator at a large shelter in Aurora, a
Chicago suburb whose shelter has been so crowded that Ms. Nilan
has asked for a portable classroom to add space.

In many cities, shelters said they were seeing more people who
became homeless after having lost jobs or being priced out of
apartments.

In Dallas, Oscar Turner, 52, was laid off from his $8-an-hour job
as a Wal-Mart greeter in early October and has been staying at
free shelters, unable to afford the small rent that he had paid
before. Mr. Turner has looked for work with the city as a crossing
guard or maintenance worker, but so far, he said, "it's not going
too good."

In Charlotte, N.C., Tyrone Hicklen, 43, was laid off at a
party-supply store and has been living in shelters for two months.
Unable to find work, he is heading to Kansas to enroll in a
truck-driving school.

In Rhode Island, John Swenson, 44, took refuge at the Warwick
shelter with his 10-year-old son, Michael, after he could not find
work at his home in Hyannis, Mass., and lost a part-time job
cooking hamburgers in Warwick.

"It's kind of late in life to be needing something," said Mr.
Swenson, unemployed for the first time in 15 years and used to
$14-an-hour jobs.

"I knew there were shelters," he said, "and that's part of what
kept me out of them. On the Cape, I helped paint the shelter in
Hyannis. I went from painting a shelter to being in one."

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