WASHINGTON — The number of chronically homeless people declined by 15% last year, according to a first-of-its-kind government report released Tuesday, though officials cautioned that part of the decline may be attributable to better counting methods.
Nationwide, almost 1.6 million people were homeless and found shelter last year, the report found.
"We're very encouraged by this," said Steven Preston, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, whose department released the report. "We want to present the facts as we see them, and the facts are really good. . . . We are making progress."
The report represents the first time that homelessness has been tracked over the course of an entire year. Prior estimates, starting in 2005, were "point-in-time" snapshots that provided a count of the homeless population on a particular night.
The new measure will enable authorities to more effectively allocate funding for homeless programs, officials said. The government wants to make this an annual report, a baseline to measure homelessness, they said.
The report defines a chronically homeless person as a disabled individual who has been continuously homeless for at least a year or has been homeless at least four times in the previous three years.
The report found that of the nearly 1.6 million homeless who found shelter, either in emergency housing or in transitional living programs, 77% were in "central cities" and the rest in suburban and rural areas. Families with children (typically a mother with two or three children) constitute 30% of this population; minorities make up 64%; and 13% are veterans.
Advocates for the homeless warn that counting the population poses challenges. For instance, homeless individuals may not want to be found. In addition, fallout from the housing crisis and economic woes may not have been evident during the time of the study, which was conducted from Oct. 1, 2006 through Sept. 30, 2007.
"Families who have been foreclosed upon -- they downsize to a cheaper apartment, move in with friends or relatives, move into an RV and do everything they can before they are on the street," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "It's a two-year downward cycle they're going to be experiencing. There hasn't been a tidal wave yet."
