DUPAGE COUNTY (STMW) — About 1,500 DuPage County residents were reported as homeless last year, including 368 under the age of 18 and 169 under 5 according to a new report, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Carol Simler, of the DuPage County Homeless Continuum of Care, told the County Board that the figures likely are too low.
The numbers included only those who had spent time in a shelter and didn’t reflect people who had doubled up with other families or found accommodations other than county shelters.
Simler stressed that many of the homeless were employed, but their income fell short of the $19 per hour that she estimated necessary for a two-bedroom apartment in DuPage County. “They are a somewhat invisible population,” she said.
Simler said that while the total homeless might not seem high compared with other counties, they nonetheless took their toll in terms of health care, incarceration and other costs to local communities.
The report was the first formal report to the county on homelessness.
In a survey of 27 cities last year, the U.S. Conference of Mayors found increases in family homelessness in 19.
Julie Dworkin of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless says that in 2008, 22 percent of families seeking emergency shelter were homeless for the first time.
Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.
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