Posted by M. Wright | Filed in: Data
According to the U.S. Dept of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), there was a 12% drop in the number of chronically homeless persons “living on the nation’s streets” between 2005 and 2006.
In the Memphis/Shelby County area there were:
- 1776 homeless individuals
- 194 homeless individuals who were unsheltered
- 113 chronically homeless individuals
- 39 chronically homeless individuals who were unsheltered
HUD awarded the area’s homeless agencies with a grand total of $4.6 million for the year, which works out to about $2,600 per homeless individual.
By the way, last year’s local report isn’t loading properly at the moment; otherwise, I would compare the Memphis/Shelby County trend to the national trend.
UPDATE: Are homeless stats cooked?
November 14th, 2007 at 5:32 am
I wish there was more information in that PDF about the methodology they use. 2000 homeless sounds like an awfully low number to me.
November 14th, 2007 at 9:57 am
We had a very interesting speaker in our Career Counseling Class this week. He was an ex-homeless person in Memphis who is a recovering alcoholic and has now been sober for almost a year. He has a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and grew up in a very abusive home. For 20 years, he lived on the street and felt like he didn’t deserve any better. Then he met someone at HopeWorks who helped him understand that he was created in God’s imagine and therefore worthy and valuable. He now gets a disablity check and has a part time job and a case manager to help him manage his money and a real apartment to live in. He also is a peer counselor at the Peer Counseling Center on Madison where people with mental health diagnosis can go and hang out every day. I’ve never met a more humble, thankful man than this one…he appreciates all the little things we take for granted everyday. He also advised us to NEVER give money to anyone begging on the street. He says there are 350 soup kitchens in this city so homeless peope can get food every day if they make an effort to do so. He said if we felt called by God to do something for them, to bring them food. It was all quite inlightening.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
I would like to meet that man.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
This page has a few details on how the information was collected nation-wide, which based on a quick reading appears to have been taken from a one-night snapshot and checked against a similar, private study. But how that snapshot survey was actually collected, or what type of evidence might have been required, I have no idea.