Today, the National Alliance to End Homelessness released the final Geography of Homelessness report. This report includes all of the previous issues in the Geography of Homelessness series and features a new section on the distribution of emergency shelter, transitional housing, and permanent supportive housing beds across the country. This new section examines the composition of the bed inventory for each of the five geographic categories (Rural to Urban) to determine if differences exist ...

Housing advocates worry 26% increase could offset progress By Ray Gronberg, The Herald-Sun DURHAM -- A single-day count in late January found 140 more homeless people in Durham County than did a companion assessment in 2009. The annual point-in-time count, orchestrated by the Durham Affordable Housing Coalition and conducted the night of Jan. 27-28, found 675 people who met the federal government's definition of being homeless. Of those, 607 were in some sort of emergency or ...

The Urban Institute recently released a paper about providing case management for households in public housing. The paper, entitled Inclusive Public Housing: Services for the Hard to House, examines how intensive case management is being used to support households in public housing in Chicago who are expected to transition to new housing units. As the Chicago Public Housing Agency moved to demolish large public housing developments, many households moved into new mixed-income developments or ...

In conjunction with a group of cities from across the country, the National Alliance to End Homelessness created its first “Quarterly Leadership Council HPRP Report.” The report examines information on how 11 cities across the nation are spending their Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) funds, as well as the results of their January 2009 point-in-time counts. Read the report here.

As a part of an increased investment of State money into runaway and homeless youth programs, Portland State University conducted an evaluation of the short-term outcomes of runaway and homeless youth programs in eight Oregon counties. In an interview with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, Donald Schweitzer, Assistant Professor of Social Work at Pacific University Oregon and member of the research team, said, "The main finding of our research was that a high percentage of youth in the ...

Some communities in the US conducted specialized counts of their homeless youth populations in 2009. The City of San Jose, in addition to performing an afternoon street youth count, conducted an in-depth, 28-question survey of 114 youth between the ages of 13-22 years. The survey found, among other things, that a dispute with family or friends was the most common reason for youth homelessness; job loss was most common reason among San Jose adults. Download the full report here.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness's sixth annual National Conference on Ending Family Homelessness was held at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, CA on February 11-12, 2010. Over 600 people from across the nation gathered together to share best practices on ending family homelessness. All of the workshop handouts and presentations that the Alliance has received from speakers are available on the conference website.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released its third Homelessness Pulse Report on the Homelessness Resource Exchange in February 2010. HUD is collaborating with nine Continuums of Care (CoCs) across the country to collect more timely data on the status of sheltered homelessness. The nine participating CoCs represent about 12 percent of the country's overall shelter and transitional housing capacity. This sample of CoCs helps HUD to supplement its yearly reports, ...

Research Update from the Institute for Children and Poverty: Early Childhood Poverty Research in the social sciences illustrates that both in-utero environments and early childhood experiences have long-run impacts on adult well-being; and family economic conditions in early childhood matter more for shaping later development than economic conditions during adolescence. A new study by an ICP researcher examines the influence of early childhood economic conditions in a nationally ...

This HUD guide discusses issues that pertain specifically to the rural homeless population and strategies CoC systems can use to address these issues and effectively serve the needs of homeless individuals and families in rural areas. Read the full guide here.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 by Jennifer Fernandez Staff Writer GREENSBORO — Every year, volunteers comb shelters, wooded areas and abandoned buildings as part of the annual “point-in-time” count of the homeless. The survey, which takes place today, will include for the first time a count of those who are considered “precariously housed” or “imminently homeless” in Greensboro. Officials handling High Point’s count said they are not ...

A new report on winter homeless services has been published by the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH). "Winter Homeless Services: Bringing Our Neighbors in From the Cold" includes data from 94 reporting organizations and programs in 40 states. It describes the policies and practices related to cold weather at these sites. The report was published to raise awareness of the dangers and consequences of hypothermia on people experiencing homelessness. Read the full report.

The 2009 Conference of the North Carolina Society for Social Work Leadership in Health Care was held in Asheville, NC on December 3-4, 2009. Click here to see NCCEH's presentation.

by Valerie Streit Fourteen years ago, Mark Horvath was in crisis. The former exec was living on the streets in Hollywood, California, where for a dollar he let people take a photograph of his pet iguana, named Dog. "I was sitting by the Chinese theater with my iguana, surrounded by Asian tourists, with my head ...

by Erik Eckholm The New York Times Published: September 5, 2009 ASHEVILLE, N.C. - In the small trailer her family rented over the summer, 9-year-old Charity Crowell picked out the green and purple outfit she would wear on the first day of school. She vowed to try harder and bring her grades back up from the C's she got last spring — a dismal semester when her parents lost their jobs and car and the family was evicted and migrated through friends’ houses and a motel.  ...

WUNC's "The State of Things" aired a program about women in poverty, both now and in the past. Topics discussed included TANF, healthcare, and childcare. Ann Burke, executive director of Urban Ministries of Wake County, spoke during the second half of the program. Listen to the archived program on The State of Things website (scroll to August 19, 2009).

By JENNIFER LEVITZ The Wall Street Journal NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Last summer, police responding to complaints about campfires under a highway overpass found dozens of homeless people living on public land along the Cumberland River. Eviction notices went up -- and then were suspended by Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, a Democrat, who said housing for the homeless should be found first. A year later, little has been found -- and Nashville, with help from local nonprofits, ...

Materials from the National Alliance to End Homelessness' 2009 Annual Conference are now available on the NAEH website.

Nan Roman, the president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, spoke on NPR's Weekend Edition about the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing program. Listen to the story on the NPR website.

The Nation August 13, 2009 Editor's Note: In response to the last "Ten Things" column, the National Alliance to End Homelessness has written its take on how to deal with this troubling issue. In July 2009, The Nation published a "Ten Things" piece titled "Ten Things You Need to Know to Live on the Streets." The provocative and thoughtful piece elicited quite a response. We, however, respectfully disagree with the premise of the piece. Before submitting to the idea that ...