From USAToday.com:
The recession continued to take its toll as more families with children became homeless for the second straight year, a U.S. government report shows.
The number of families in homeless shelters increased 7% to 170,129 from fiscal year 2008 through fiscal year 2009, a report released today by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found. At the same time, the overall number of homeless people in shelters fell 2% to 1.56 million.
"As the nation's housing and job markets show encouraging signs of recovery, there are still far too many families who are on the brink of becoming homeless or have fallen into our shelter system," Secretary Shaun Donovan said in a statement.
The annual report counted the homeless in two ways. The first was a census in cities and counties, where volunteers fanned out one night during the last week in January to count those living on streets and in shelters. That count found 643,000 people were homeless. The chronically homeless dropped 10% from 2008 to 111,000.
That decline stems from more local and federal efforts to find the chronically homeless permanent housing and social services, said Nan Roman of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.