Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Fewer Homeless Veterans Using Shelters, Study Finds

A Quarter of Homeless are Veterans



data by US state showing percentage of Veterans who are homeless







Among the various findings in a just-released government report entitled "Veteran Homelessness: A Supplemental Report to the 2010 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress" by the U. S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Veteran Affairs, as reported in the New York Times - are:
  • Homeless veterans are most likely to be middle-aged white men with a disability.
  • Younger veterans are more than twice as likely to be homeless than non-Veterans in the same age group.
  • California has the most homeless veterans of any state, about 25% of the total.
  • The number of veterans who used emergency shelters or transitional housing for the homeless in 2010 dropped 3% from the year before, to 144,842, from 149,465.
  • Veterans continue to be overrepresented in the nation’s homeless population. They are 13% of all homeless adults in shelters, although just over 9% of the total adult population. Once veterans fall into poverty, a higher percentage of them become homeless, about one in nine.

Baltimore's Role in Civil Rights History Discussed in New Book

cover of Nathan's book "Round & Round Together"








Review of Book about Baltimore's Civil Rights History


Amy Nathan's just-published Round and Round Together: Taking a Merry-Go-Round Ride into the Civil Rights Movement (The Nautilus Series) (Paul Dry Books, 2011).


This book is, according to Kirkus Reviews, "A snapshot of the civil-rights movement in one city provides insight into the important role of individual communities as change moved through the country... a case study of how citizens of one city both precipitated and responded to the whirlwind of social change around them." 


The city is Baltimore, and the book entertainingly chronicles the integration battles at Gwynn Oak, Kresge's, etc. Jacques Kelly has a very interesting article on this in The Baltimore Sun. You can read it here. If you want to buy the book, Amazon has it, among many others.