Press Room

At 19 of the 20 schools that the Education Department announced last month it plans to shut down, the number of homeless kids jumped by more than 100%. The increase swamped social workers and left principals scrambling for after-school funding to give kids a place to go after classes ended, teachers and administrators say.

In a Housing and Urban Development survey last year, 2,000 New Jersey adults said they were homeless because they had been forced from their apartments. While some, no doubt, had been evicted legally for nonpayment, the HUD survey concluded foreclosure-based evictions accounted for much of the 70 percent increase in the number of homeless former renters.

Although the National Institute of Mental Health said that only about 6 percent of America's overall population was classified as severely mentally ill in 2009, between 20 and 25 percent of America's homeless suffers from some form of severe mental illness, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Shelters aren't well equipped or trained to handle the special needs of people with mental illnesses.

The Street to Home Foundation today released its long-awaited plan to address homelessness. The 10-year plan outlines three primary goals: Build new supportive housing, prevent homelessness among at-risk groups, and nurture community involvement.

The walls are bare. The closets, nearly empty. And there's barely any furniture inside. But for 40 formerly homeless women, the Pebbles Apartments are home sweet home.

While 2009 saw donation declines for more than half of nonprofit groups nationwide, and while more than a third of organizations making grants to nonprofits saw their totals drop, the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation bucked the trend.

The weather has turned dangerously cold in much of the country, putting homeless people at high risk of injury or even death. If you encounter someone and want to help, what should you do?

More than 813,000 military veterans live in Virginia, including more than 38,000 veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. And that doesn't include the families of service members who have been deployed. The Virginia Wounded Warrior Program is using a tiny budget to reach a big problem -- veterans with behavioral-health problems, ranging from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder to traumatic brain injuries.

The Dutchtown Campus Apartments, a Union Mission program that provides permanent homes for the homeless, is a 48-unit complex on Middleground Road that provides supportive housing for chronically homeless individuals and families with mental health and addictive disease needs, HIV or disabilities.

On January 5, 2010, the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) kicked off the Frequent User Service Enhancement (FUSE) and Housing First pilots. FUSE will provide supportive housing for 30 individuals in Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport who have cycled in and out of jail, shelter, emergency health, and other public systems and the goal is to reduce cycling through the prison and other systems.