Homelessness down slightly

FEDERAL REPORT

A new federal report shows homelessness in the United States crept up slightly this year, while the Columbus area’s tally of 1,691 homeless men, women and children represents a decline since the last count.

Local shelter officials say the overall dip here — about 1.9 percent from January 2016 to January 2017 — is largely attributable to a long- awaited slowing in the number of families in need of shelter.

It mirrors the change they see when looking at their internal reports, which, unlike the one-day count used for the national assessment, are based on months of data.

“We still haven’t gotten down to what I’ll call the pre- recession impacts,” said Michelle Heritage, executive director of the Community Shelter Board. “But this is the first time since 2011 that we’ve seen fewer families needing to come in the front door. The trend line is in the right direction.”

Still, the improvement in Franklin County’s family homelessness (down 2.6 percent) lagged the national decline in that category ( 5.4 percent) reported Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The annual snapshot report is based on a census of the homeless population taken throughout the country on a single night in January, when advocates scour streets, soup kitchens, shelters and other programs to gather information for the federally mandated count.

It showed 553,742 people homeless in America, with most of them in emergency shelters and transitional housing programs. Nearly 193,000 were on the streets.

Federal officials say the 0.7 percent increase in overall homelessness seems linked to spikes in high-cost housing markets such as Los Angeles, which reported a jump in homelessness since 2016 of nearly 26 percent.

“With rents rising faster than incomes, we need to bring everybody to the table to produce more affordable housing and ease the pressure that is forcing too many of our neighbors into our shelters and onto our streets,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said. “This is not a federal problem — it’s everybody’s problem.”

Although Columbus has made progress, Heritage said, homelessness is still a crisis for many. Columbus, for example, is the only large urban area in Ohio where family homelessness remains higher than it was five years ago, according to the counts. Cleveland, Cincinnati and others have posted declines in family homelessness from 2013.

And Columbus and Youngstown are the only major urban areas in the state where overall homelessness hasn’t dropped when compared with five years ago.

“People are staying in shelter much longer because we’re having trouble being able to find them housing that they can afford and that isn’t in terrible condition,” Heritage said. “We must address affordable housing. Rents are increasing at three times the rate of incomes.”

Local shelter board officials also routinely comb homeless data to document racial disparities, and in Columbus, they are glaring. “Many more African-Americans become homeless in our community than others, and that’s even when compared to other urban areas,” Heritage said.

Among families in Columbus homeless shelters, about 71 percent are headed by an AfricanAmerican, she said. Just 22 percent of the county population is black.

“People need to understand: This is a racial disparity that has to do with things occurring outside the homeless system,” Heritage said. “We have to ask ourselves why.”

Local reviews of homeless data also show that low- wage jobs are increasingly behind people without housing, she said. “More people than ever are coming in employed.”