Reply #11: I'm not sure how the census counts it [View All]

[MountainLaurel]

But the figures that the National Coalition for the Homeless and other advocacy groups tabulate do include the functionally homeless. And I fear these numbers are going to explode once the new bankruptcy law goes into effect. I volunteered at a family shelter for several years, and our residents could be divided into two categories: families where a parent had a health crisis (including day laborers who were injured in construction accidents but had no health insurance and were not eligible for workman's comp and many families dealing with severe mental illness) and those who had another sort of catastrophe, such as a house fire or a husband discovered to be raping his daughters (in the latter one, interestingly, the husband was allowed to keep the house since it was in his name (while his wife was home raising the kids) and the wife and her five children had to look elsewhere for living space).