New Jersey’s homeless population shrank between 2005 and 2007, but advocates for the poor say the faltering economy is reversing the trend.
Accoding to a survey done by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, there were 17,314 homeless persons in New Jersey in 2007, or about 20 for every 10,000 New Jerseyans. That was down about 11 percent over the two-year period. In addition, the state saw decreases in the all categories of homelessness during that time period.
The state, according to the survey, has fared better than the rest of the nation — which has 22 homeless persons per 10,000 people with a greater percentage (18 percent to 15 percent) considered chronically homeless and a dramatic 42 percent being unsheltered, compared with just 14 percent in New Jersey.
Part of the reason for this is New Jersey’s relative wealth — the per capita income in the state is higher than most other states and just 8 percent of New Jerseyans live below the poverty line, compared with 13 percent nationally. Of course, the cost of living here is higher, which distorts some of the economic numbers.
According to the survey, there was one category in which New Jersey outpaced the rest of the country — a troubling statistic that could help explain the anecdotal evidence being compiled by advocates for the homeless: A greater percentage of New Jerseyans face what is called a “severe housing cost burden — 19 percent — than the rest of the nation.
As the recession — what some are calling “The Great Recession” — deepens and more people face job loss, reduced hours (and wages) and increased costs for fuel, heat, food and other necessities, more and more people could find themselves facing homelessness.
Lisanne Finston, director at Elijah’s Promise in New Brunswick, told The Home News Tribune she is seeing evidence of this already. Surveys being collected to help prepared for the biennial point in time survey, she said, are showing “the number of people that we have counted are significantly higher than last year” and that, “Across the board, in each category, the numbers are up, we’re at least 10 percent higher and getting to 20 percent.”
“Anecdotally, we’re seeing people coming in who have suffered foreclosures and have exhausted all their resources,” Finston said. “Not only have the national trends reversed, but we are only at the beginning of how bad it’s going to get.”
Mercer County advocates, quoted in The Times of Trenton, are seeing the same trends. The county had experienced a 47 percent drop in the number of homeless people, according to the survey, but Mary Gay Abbott-Young, executive director of Rescue Mission of Trenton, told the paper that her “organization has been providing shelter for additional people for several months now.” She reported a 21 percent increase for the first two weeks of January, compared with the same time last year.
Abbott-Young said the economic crisis — a factor driving more people into shelters — has also resulted in a decrease in furniture and clothing donations, but the organization received monetary donations during the holidays last month.
“We’re going to have an increase in factors known to contribute to homelessness,” she said, “unemployment, increase in stress levels, mortgage foreclosures.”
We have entered a dark economic period, but we remain among the richest nations in history. Surely, we can do better than to have our people living in shelters or on the streets.
Hank Kalet 