The facility’s daily count of homeless children exceeded 100 eight times last month, shattering the previous record of three days in triple digits set during one month in the mid-1980s, officials said.
The growth in child homelessness is troubling but unsurprising, considering that the region has been slammed with a “perfect storm” of economic and social crises that are harming families and household stability, said David Bohardt, executive director of St. Vincent de Paul.
“We are seeing more children at the shelter,” he said. “But we do whatever it takes to provide the highest possible level of support and care for everybody who comes to the shelter.”
About five months ago, St. Vincent’s Gateway shelter served and sheltered about 33 children per day.
But in August, the number of families with children in the shelter began to increase. Some of the families were very large, with five or more members.
By September, the facility was nearly brimming with kids, most of whom were infants and toddlers, officials said. The average number of children sheltered there each day was 88.
This month, the numbers have fallen to about 62 kids per day, according to local advocates. But they say that is still higher than normal.
More than 1.3 million U.S. children and youth experience homelessness each year, according to national statistics.
One night in January 2015, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development conducted a count of homeless people, which found that about 30 percent of the sheltered population were under the age of 18. HUD’s goal is to end family homelessness by 2020.
The Homeless Solutions Policy Board recently identified homeless families with children as a priority population targeted for “systemic change,” said Jessica Jenkins, assistant director of the Montgomery County Human Services Planning & Development Department.
The focus will be on identifying effective strategies and interventions to make sure homelessness for families with children is rare, brief and non-recurring, she said.
Locally, the goal is to create a task force to evaluate data from the homeless system and other sources to come up with a community action plan, she said.
“Nationally, as well as locally, rapid rehousing, a combination of temporary rental assistance and case management, has proven to be an effective strategy for ending family homelessness,” Jenkins said.
There is no way to pin down what caused the spike in children at the shelter in September or why St. Vincent today is serving more homeless kids than in the past, Bohardt said. But, he said, likely there are some factors at play.
The supply of affordable housing in the Dayton area remains inadequate in part because the foreclosure crisis led to thousands of homes being abandoned or seized by lenders and being taken off the market, he said.
Rents have risen faster than home prices, and people who cannot or do not want to purchase a home can be priced out of the rental market.
Many clients served by St. Vincent have been left behind by the modern economy because they lack the skills needed to acquire available jobs or work that pays a living wage, Bohardt said.
The heroin and opiate crisis is ripping some families apart, Bohardt said, and many other families are being financially squeezed because of medical problems that require expensive medications or lead to burdensome bills.
Oftentimes, families the Gateway serves do not have the support systems in place to help them tackle addiction, drug abuse or other disruptive life events, Bohardt said.
The Gateway shelter’s top priority is providing emergency housing to families with children, and it should be able to accommodate as many people who need a place to stay and other services, officials said.
The Gateway facility provides three meals a day, shelter, 24/7 security, personal care items, case management services and tutoring assistance.
St. Vincent also partners with other community groups to provide job-skills training, resume preparation and other employment assistance.
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