homeless facts

Facts about NHHR's clients

While individual homeless numbers continue their slow decline, family homelessness continues to rise. At New Haven Home Recovery, we see this first hand:

Single women requesting shelter at Martha's Place increased 58%, but at CareWays, our family shelter for women and their children, requests increased 105% this year.

Lack of affordable housing is the biggest challenge facing homeless families. The length of stay at our shelters increased 17% because families had difficulty finding affordable housing.

38% of the people living in our shelters this year were children. 45% of the children at our shelters were under the age of 6.

Agency-wide the number of children we served increased 42% from last year to this year. That includes a 48% increase in the number of school aged children and a 33% increase in the number of children age 5 and younger.

Facts about the reality facing homeless women and children

According to The National Center on Family Homelessness:

Children experiencing homelessness are sick 4 times more often than other children, go hungry at twice the rate of other children, have high rates of obesity due to nutritional deficiencies and have 3 times the rate of emotional and behavioral problems compared to non-homeless children. By the age of 12, 83% of these children have witnessed at least on serious violent event. They also are 4 times more likely to show delayed development and are twice as likely to have learning disabilities as non-homeless children.

84% of families experiencing homelessness are headed by single moms. These families have a dramatically higher rates of separation than non-homeless families. Over 92% of these mothers have experienced severe physical and/or sexual abuse during their lifetime. For 63%, this abuse was perpetrated by an intimate partner. They have more physical and mental health issues than their non-homeless peers.