Monday, November 17, 2014

Child homelessness hits all-time high in U.S. with one in 30 children now without a permanent home

  • America's Youngest Outcasts report calculates that nearly 2.5 million children were homeless at some point in 2013
  • It blames the nation's high poverty rate, the lack of affordable housing and the impacts of pervasive domestic violence
  • The report includes a composite index ranking the states on the extent of child homelessness, efforts to combat it, and the level of child well-being
  • States with the best scores are Minnesota, Nebraska and Massachusetts - at the bottom are Alabama, Mississippi and California
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  •  In good care: In this June 2014 photo provided by Transition House, a homeless shelter in Santa Barbara, California, Melody, aged four, gets to work with some paints
    The number of homeless children in the U.S. has surged in recent years to an all-time high, amounting to one child in every 30, according to a comprehensive state-by-state report that blames the nation's high poverty rate, the lack of affordable housing and the impacts of pervasive domestic violence.
    Titled America's Youngest Outcasts, the report being issued Monday by the National Center on Family Homelessness calculates that nearly 2.5 million American children were homeless at some point in 2013. 
    The number is based on the Department of Education's latest count of 1.3 million homeless children in public schools, supplemented by estimates of homeless pre-school children not counted by the DOE.

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