Counting On New Numbers To Distribute Federal Homeless Funds

USA Today reports on this past year’s national homeless count. Here's the article. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) mandated that every community that receives HUD dollars for homeless services and housing must perform a homeless count.

The carrot for doing such a count? Receive a portion of HUD’s annual allocation of $1.6 billion for homeless services and housing across the country.

Los Angeles County performed its count earlier this year resulting in an “official” count of 91,000 homeless people.

HUD will use this number as “a baseline, a tool to gauge the effectiveness of local programs.” These counts will be repeated every two years. USA Today tabulated a nationwide number of homeless pegged at 727,304.

Some other interesting insights: Affluent areas also have homeless people. Cities with warmer climates have more homeless on the streets. In Los Angeles County 88% of the people who are homeless are on the streets. Many people living on the streets also work daily jobs.