Homelessness in MI Down, According to HUD Report

A report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says homelessness fell 13.3 percent in Rhode Island since 2010. That’s down 2% from the past year. Even more striking is the drop in veteran homelessness, down 35 percent over the past six years and 50 percent in the past four.

The report shows the least progress was in the number of people who are chronically homeless.

Nationwide, Veteran homelessness declined 36 percent between 2010 and 2015; family homelessness dropped 19 percent, and chronic homelessness fell 22 percent.

“The Obama Administration has made an historic commitment to effectively end homelessness in this nation”.

But HUD called efforts to measure youth homelessness “a work in progress because communities are still learning how to collect this data accurately”. But other agencies and youth advocates dispute that figure. That includes 4,667 unaccompanied youths under 18.

Improved data collection informs HUD’s strategies for ending homelessness. She and her family were homeless and living in the motel as a temporary shelter.

Steve Berg, a vice president at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said that it makes sense that education and housing officials count homelessness differently because they are two different systems with two different ways of thinking about the problem, he said.

In January 2010, however, the total homeless count in Madison/Dane County was much lower, at 568 people. In January 2015, an estimated 564,708 people were homeless on a given night. In both years, about 88 percent of the homeless were sheltered and 12 percent were on the street.

There was a five percent reduction in families experiencing homelessness between the 2014 and January 2015.