America's Coming Homeless Surge

In the current downturn, federal assistance has helped avert a spike in homelessness, but that tap is now running dry.

Get ready for the next big financial bubble: the growth of the U. S. homeless population.

The biggest recent assistance for the homeless came in President Barack Obama's 2009 stimulus package. The measure provided $1.5 billion to the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program, temporarily aiding homeless and near-homeless households. According to a report issued in January by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the program has helped more than one million impoverished people find housing, but it is set to end this fall.

"The resources provided by (the program) have run out in many communities . . . . Debt and deficit at the federal level have already begun to shrink assistance available to the most vulnerable," according to the report. "The failure to sustain this early recipe for success threatens to undermine progress now and in the future."

More