IStock Photo 10467047 © Joe_Potato

The recently released 2009 Homeless Assessment Report to Congress reveals that a growing number of American families are without a home. Slightly more than 170,000 families were given emergency shelter at some point during the calendar year, a 30% increase over 2007. The odds a homeless person is part of a homeless family now stand at 1 in 2.7.

While a homeless individual seeking shelter is most often a middle-aged adult male, adults seeking emergency housing as part of a family group are overwhelmingly female. The majority are mothers under the age of 31. More than half the children they bring with them are under the age of six. The odds a sheltered person in a homeless family is under the age of 18 are 1 in 1.65.

Black families are disproportionately represented: the odds a sheltered person in a homeless family is black are 1 in 2.09, as compared to the odds (1 in 4.24) a person is non-Hispanic white. The report also found that, compared to 2007, more fathers were included among the homeless family numbers, reflecting the loss of jobs during the recession.

Homeless families are more likely than individuals to be offered shelter if they come to the attention of authorities or service agencies, but the odds are still estimated to be 1 in 4.69 that a homeless family will have no place to sleep on a given night. Families that do end up in emergency shelters tend to be there longer than individuals (the 2009 median stay was 36 days compared to 17 days).

And many shelters are simply not set up to accommodate the burgeoning number of intact families with no place to live. In the Baltimore, Maryland area, the number of homeless people has skyrocketed almost 25% in the past year, with more than a third reporting they are homeless for the first time. But, according to a report in the Baltimore Sun, only two shelters in Baltimore County have dedicated spaces for people with children, and many families have to be separated into different areas.

Being without a home of their own is traumatic for families, especially for the youngest members. These children often demonstrate a variety of residual effects both during and after their time without a roof, including elevated levels of anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, and below-average academic performance.

In some good news, the report reveals that for the second straight year, the number of homeless individuals declined, even as the number of homeless families grew. There were 1,035,000 individuals given emergency shelter or transitional housing in 2009: 1 in 1.57 were men; more than 10% were veterans, and more than 40% were disabled.