Although the total number of homeless persons in America dropped slightly between 2008 and 2009, the number of homeless families increased for the second straight year, almost certainly related to the ongoing recession. The 2009 Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness released by the U. S. Conference of Mayors cited the top three causes of family homelessness as being:

• A lack of affordable housing (74 percent)
• Poverty (52 percent)
• Unemployment (44 percent) and domestic violence (44 percent)1

The U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2009 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, designed to measure the scope of homelessness across the country, found that of the nearly 1.56 million people who used an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program during 2009, about one-third (34.1 percent) were homeless as members of families rather than by themselves. HUD defines a family as a household that includes an adult 18 years of age or older and at least one child. In 2009, approximately 170,000 families were sheltered homeless, about a 30 percent increase since 2007. Furthermore, family homelessness became more severe in that it took the typical family longer to leave shelter: the median number of nights that family members stayed in an emergency shelter increased from 30 nights in 2008 to 36 nights in 2009.2