| richardhutnik said: The issue here is that they are cutting funding to shelters. Go back tot he issue I raised and answer that. |
I did?
Like I said... 80% of people who are homless aren't by the end of 3 weeks.
Aside from which... despite funding being cut to shelters... the percentage of homeless found in sheleters has INCREASED and the number of people unsheltered on the street has DECREASED as a percentage.
ESPIECALLY among the Chronic homeless. Partially because the police essentially FORCE you to go to a shelter. The Chronic homeless number dropped 10% from 2008 to 2009.
Which of course your article hasn't mentioned because well... it's an inconveinent truth.
Which is... funding isn't the issue. It's getting people to use the beds.
On the one night check in 2009 there were 643,067 people.
Some homeless people do in fact get turned away, largely because there is no good setup right now to show the homeless where to go, and homeless shelters tend to have strict sign in and sign out policies however actual bed utilization in cities on average is only 88%... and only 82% when it comes to transitional housing.
Individuals are far less likely to be sheltered then familys... because individuals are far less likely to want to be sheltered.
For example, a number of homeless people are people who own a car or camper, and are going to be moving into a new place soon, but have to wait a few days or a week or two before their new place is ready.
So, they sleep in their car or camper. Afterall there is a lot of fear of disease and rape centered around homeless shelters.
Others are just those... as mentioned above, who have mental problems, and don't trust authority/have trouble complying with shelter rules.
In otherwords. The article is largely misrepresenting the statistics for political demagoging. (it is huff post afterall) The numbers of beds per person doesn't really matter when a great number of people don't want to use the beds.
If you want to go through the math though... on one day in Janurary there was 643,067 homeless people. There are 643,423 year round beds in the country. (Not counting temporary overflow beds (30,000) which increases the actual number for capacity, or winter beds,(20,000) which would in janurary.) Now i'm not naive enough to believe the beds PERFECTLY match up, however I do believe they probably match up pretty well since unusused homeless shelters are unlikely to stick around.
