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New York Times
Rural homelessness has always taken a back seat to the more glaring problems in cities.
Most studies estimate homeless people in small towns account for about 9 percent of the 600,000 or so homeless nationwide.
But local officials and advocates for the homeless in small towns say that economic distress in recent years, including closing plants, failing farms, rising housing costs and other troubles, has left more people without homes and in greater need of help.
Real numbers are hard to come by because most rural areas, where homeless services often means ad-hoc help from church groups or volunteers, are far behind a parade of cities taking head counts.
Rural homelessness "doesn't get enough attention," said Philip Mangano, the executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Bush administration's chief coordinator of homeless services.
But Mr. Mangano said the problem had been difficult to assess because rural communities by and large had not chronicled their problems with the data-heavy planning documents the Housing and Urban Development Department and other federal agencies increasingly demand.
Posted on October 11, 2006 01:53 AM
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