More Families Are Becoming Homeless, Study Finds

Largest Increases in 2008 Came in Rural and Suburban Areas, Study Finds. Last year, we saw a 34 percent increase in homeless families and a 24 percent increase in homeless children," he said. "Why do we go beyond capacity? Because in a just society, a child should not have to sleep outside or in a car." Gill is a frontline witness to the change in the makeup of the country's homeless. The stereotype of a homeless person as a single man no longer applies. A resident of the Bakersfield center is far more likely to be a young mother with a "good, solid job and a mortgage that she just couldn't pay." In Fresno, Calif., which has one of the country's highest concentrations of poverty, homeless encampments have formed