A Quarter of Homeless are Veterans
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.
