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Homelessness down?
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) latest report on homelessness indicates it dropped 12 percent from 2005 to 2007, with chronic homelessness almost 30 percent lower than in 2005. Good news, right? Perhaps, but it depends in large part on how you define homeless.
While in past years the count included families who were living in RVs or two families to an apartment, this year HUD only tallied those who were actually in shelters or on the streets–the official HUD definition of a homeless person. Why the change?
The number crunchers leading the federal fight believe that as long as Americans continue to perceive homelessness as an implacable problem, they’ll never muster the will to help. But if the government can show that the numbers are actually relatively small–like the 125,000 chronic homeless they are now counting–then the public might just be up for tackling the issue.
While critics believe HUD should return to its prior method of tabulating homelessness, report co-author Dennis Culhane says limited funding means an expanded definition of homelessness “isn’t going to make a hill of beans of difference. It’s only going to dilute what we’re doing.” What do you think?
back to top14 Comments to “Homelessness down?”
We Americans consider 2 families in an apartment as “homeless” but most homeless people would be delighted to be able to share an apartment. At my church we have a once homeless person living in the church which has no special accommodation for him
but he is pleased to be there and is now supporting himself as a handy man. He does not want to move and we don’t want him to move. Is he still considered homeless? I don’t think so!!
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Considering the hovels that some in third world countries — and even some here — live in, I think living in an RV or sharing an apartment would be much better. There are those that choose to sell their houses and live in RVs, many of which cost more than a moderately priced house! HUD should only count the truly homeless: those living under bridges, in shelters, in the park, etc.
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For the first seven years of our marriage, my wife and I, and later, a son lived in an 8×35 foot house trailer. It was tight, but warm, and everyone had a bed and we had a place to eat.
We were thankful for it. I don’t know what HUD would think of it.
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Ask any person who lives in a large city if they believe homelessness is down.
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Next thing you know the city of San Francisco will hire these homeless in order to fix this problem once and for all They will realize that these people are homeless because they do not have a job. The city also will realize that the funds are too short for retraining them and that only thing these people are good at is pan handling. So they will go on the city payroll to pan handle.
Since the folks in SF are all socialists, the city will confiscate all of the money these once homeless folks shake down from other folks on the streets and supply these poor people with city housing as a quid pro quo.
But, since these these poor people will still not have money to pay for utilities, food, booze, drugs, clothes and hygiene supplies, the city will have to ask faith based charities funded by the federal government to cover these costs and needs or possibly the US Military will be willing do so since the city has such a fine relationship with Our Champions in Uniform.
Yep, the left will cure this problem once and for all now that they are in charge and past economic prosperity has reduced this problem to something even they can manage.
We could all learn something from the homeless too if we were not so snooty, close minded and evil. It might come in handy too since most of us will homeless ourselves once Obama’s reign starts
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According to the first definition, my family was homeless at one time. So was my daughter’s family. What a surprise! Oh, so was my cousin who lived in a trailer like Chas did, while she and her husband built their first home. In fact, I never realized all the people I personally know who have been homeless!
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I live in a town of around 35,000. Within three blocks of where I sit right now, there is a Union Rescue mission which provides overnight only accomodations for at least 40, a vets group which provides full accomodation for 15 and has demand for at least 50, and an abused womens shelter which houses 10 or so + kids.
All of these folks are unquestionably homeless.
Even the most craven, indifferent political flack can do the numbers and see that an estimate of 125,000 is a pile of hooey.
We’ve also got hundreds of thousands of foreclosures going on–
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It seems that they’ve got the definition correct now… Homeless should be when you don’t have a place to go to every night with place to sleep… If you’re going to a shared apartment or an RV you got a home…
I regularly vacation with friends and share a small condo and other regularly use an RV as their vacation home… If people choose to do that for vacation why should it be considered homeless?
I don’t know that their reasoning of changing the definition as a perception play is a good choice, but I think the new definition is more accurate and focuses the attention on the people who really need help the most…
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Most of the homeless are in that situation because the government (legal system) threw them out of nice warm insane asylums.
Homelessness is not a problem. The government is a problem.
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Hey lefties,
Here’s a line for you: Of course homelessness is down! The evil Bush administration is killing them off!
Heh! Heh! Some of you probably would believe it.
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Maybe we should start worrying about the homeless when “Mother Pelosi” starts taking them in at her home and feeding them.
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RRBAR,
Pelosi believes a Democrat is homeless when and if the government hasn’t taken away a home from a Republican with a ‘Windfall Home Tax’ and given this confiscated home to a needy, victimized Democrat – but the Republican still has to pay off the mortgage and ongoing utilities on the confiscated home.
Sadly, there are few homeless democrats even with her pathetic definition
For Republican farmers the laws have changed slightly. It used to be that Pelosi would confiscate the milk that a Republican farmer’s cows would produce and give it to needy, victimized Democrats. Now she will confiscate the cows from the Republican farmers and give them to victimized Democrats but the Republican farmers will still have to milk and feed their confiscated cows going forward.
Republican call girls don’t want to know how the new laws affects them but they can find out on Nancy’s new web site –
FreesexforgayswithAIDS.org
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I guess we were homeless, too at one point–while waiting for the GOVERNMENT to issue permits for us to move our mobile home (already purchased) onto our already-purchased land, we lived for 4 MONTHS with my sil and bil (in their 2 bedroom MH with our toddler and baby).
The county actually required us to cut a second road through the underbrush to reach the “hard road” when we had a perfectly serviceable dirt road accessable from our home! My hubby is very determined, and very impressive!
The hoops and permits and clunky steps that the gov’t requires citizens to go through probably does contribute to the homeless population. Sigh.
Then when we finally got in, the same gov’t offices we’d been in constant touch with failed to mention that we needed to file for our homestead exemption for property taxes until the day after the deadline.
We appealed the penalty ($600), and were denied. You’d think they’d give country folks in trailers a break! (Trailers are kind of like an oversized RV…) Instead, the compassionate liberals who run this area took every advantage they could.
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Actually, as long as we’re paying property taxes and can lose our homes for not paying them, we’re all homeless.
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