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As of October of 2008, 2,472 homeless families were living in emergency shelter funded by MA Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA). Most of these families are headed by a single mother. These 2,472 families include 4,413 children and youth. Of these, 2,379 were less than six years old. The shelter system has reached its capacity, prompting DTA to place families in isolated motels for periods ranging from a couple of weeks to a few months.
But the homeless families in DTA-funded shelters are only part of the story of family homelessness. Another 1,000 children and youth are temporarily housed in domestic violence shelters, substance abuse shelters, and HIV/AIDS shelters.
Although DTA does track the number of families who are denied shelter, no state agency counts the families who have no fixed residence and are on the move from motel room to car to campground.
The extent of this phenomenon is reflected in data collected and analyzed by the Mass. Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in cooperation with the U.S. Centers on Disease Control for the 2005 and 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. This data shows that approximately 56,000 school-aged children and youth are homeless at any point in time (a conservative estimate, due to a variety of factors). Given that there are equal numbers of school-aged and younger-than-school-aged homeless children in Massachusetts*, there are at least least another 56,000 homeless children who are younger than school age, for a total of well over 100,000 homeless children and youth in the Bay State.
*Situation Critical: Meeting the Housing Needs of Lower-Income Massachusetts Residents,” p. 9, UMASS Boston, McCormack Institute, Center for Social Policy (2000).
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