Elderly homelessness down from 2005

Banner Staff

On the night of Boston’s 27th Annual Homeless Census, Mayor Thomas M. Menino joined homeless advocates and leaders of Boston’s business, healthcare and faith communities for the street count of unsheltered homeless persons. Nearly 100 emergency shelter, transitional housing, domestic violence, behavioral and medical health providers contributed to the survey.

“In a perfect world, there would not be any homeless people living on our streets, but as we look at this year’s census numbers, we do see some positives,” Menino said. “There are fewer elderly on our streets and fewer adults in shelters now than last year. We also see that children are among the fastest growing homeless populations.”

The mayor added that he looks forward to working with Gov. Deval Patrick and the new state Congress to further efforts in preventing the unfortunate trend of homelessness in Boston.

One key finding was that the number of elderly homeless people living without shelter on Boston’s streets has decreased significantly. In 2004, census volunteers learned the ages of the street population. They found that 77 elders were living on the streets without shelter. Since that time, city officials, homeless advocates and community-based agencies have been working to reduce the elderly homeless population. The result has been a 63 percent decrease in two years in the number of unsheltered seniors, from 77 two years ago to 44 last year to 28 this year.

The total number of homeless citizens has, unfortunately, increased slightly from 2005 to 2006, though only by a very small margin. The number of homeless children increased most significantly, up from 1355 individuals in 2005 to 1523 in 2006. The number of families on the street also increased slightly.

In recognition of the rising challenge of family homelessness, the mayor’s office and the City of Boston worked closely with the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Family Foundation to launch a homelessness prevention initiative in the hopes of providing targeted assistance to low-income families and individuals at risk of homelessness. The Boston Homelessness Prevention Clearinghouse, the state’s largest regional housing nonprofit agency, has provided hundreds of low-income households with information and referral, tenancy mediation and housing relocation assistance to keep them in their homes.