Homeless Families on the Rise

New York Times Story on Homeless Students

The New York Times had a great feature on the increase in homeless children within school as we start the new academic year. This is a huge problem in Cleveland, and we try to help by offering a contact sheet for children in their school district here. This provides information on who is responsible for helping a child that is in danger of being homeless or already without housing. Often the teachers are the first to recognize that there is a problem with the family and their housing situation. They will notice a child will be suddenly come to school tired, depressed, grades will drop, and often the teacher is the one will confide in. The one good thing to come from "No Child Left Behind" Law is that every district has to have a liaison to help students who find themselves homeless and report those stats to the State of Ohio. We are fortunate in Cleveland to have a model program for homeless children at the Cleveland Public Schools with Project ACT.

The Coalition published a report in 2007 on the State of Family Homelessness. We detailed the problem back before the current downturn. The bottom line note from our report was that 2007 was the worst time in our history for homeless women. We listed a number of overarching issues including the lack of domestic violence beds, the inability for couples and even married homeless couples to remain together, and the poor conditions of the family shelters with four facilities closing in the last six years. Things have only gotten worse in Cleveland over the last two years. We saw an amazing increase from the 2006 to 2007 school year and similar numbers last year. Check out the report and the state of homeless reports on our website.

Brian
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