Get the Facts

HPCGC Fact Sheet On Homelessness

Date: Nov. 14, 2005
Compiled by: Nancy Hunter, Consultant

Homelessness is a problem which affects every community in the nation. Large or small, metropolitan or rural, all communities face the problem of individuals and families who have nowhere to live. The latest HPCGC Point in Time Count showed a total of 1940 homeless persons in Guilford County.

  • Numerous studies over the past two decades have led national and local policies to support community-wide Continuums of Care for the homeless that encompass the following:
    • Outreach
    • Emergency Shelter
    • Transitional Housing
    • Supportive Services
    • Permanent Housing
    • Permanent Supportive Housing

    The goal of such a continuum is to move people through the system toward permanent housing.

  • The National Alliance to End Homelessness developed a working framework to end homelessness in a document titled “National Plan to End Homelessness in 10 Years.” The NAEH document was adopted by the Bush administration as a national blueprint, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has pushed for local communities to do the same. As local communities struggle with the issues related to homelessness, they have developed different approaches and different funding mechanisms for targeting homelessness.
  • Homeless individuals and families use significant amounts of public funding, whether through targeted homeless programs or through emergency or inpatient medical treatment, public safety and criminal justice systems, or other public resources. Those who are chronically homeless present the greatest challenges to communities in terms of resources consumed. Typically 10 to 15 percent of the chronically homeless who use emergency shelters throughout the year use 50 percent or more of all emergency shelter resources in those communities.1
  • Cost analyses in cities such as New York, San Diego, and others, have shown that supportive housing funding is the least expensive of the resources that might otherwise be accessed.2
  • These funding issues are a reason that housing the homeless and resolving the crises that are causing individuals or families to be homeless represent both a moral and a financial victory for communities. This is truly a win-win situation in which communities can save money by doing the right thing.

>> Click here for “HPCGC Fact Sheet on Homelessness” in PDF format.

1 Strategies for Reducing Chronic Street Homelessness, Walter R. McDonald & Associates, Inc., and The Urban Institute, January 2004.
2 Martha R. Burt, Assessing Public Costs Before and After Permanent Supportive Housing, Corporation for Supportive Housing, 2004