Report: 23 percent of Hawaii homeless are children

From Hawaii KIDS COUNT

The 2011 Homeless Service Utilization Report is sixth in a series of reports developed by the University of Hawaii Center on the Family and the State Department of Human Services Homeless Programs Office. This report presents the most current data on homeless individuals receiving services in Hawaii and aims to inform decision making and actions that reduce homelessness. 

The report includes state- and county-level data about the demographic characteristics of individuals and households who accessed homeless support services during the 2011 fiscal year, based on agency-entered data in the Homeless Management and Information System.

The data from the Shelter Program includes those individuals who received homeless services at an emergency or transitional shelter, while the Outreach Program includes individuals who experienced literal homelessness – for example, living in a car, park or on the beach – and received outreach services.

The following are data relating to children and families from the report:

• Of the households receiving Shelter Program services, over one third (39 percent) were either single-parent (22 percent) or two-parent (17 percent) households with children. Nearly a fifth (18 percent) of households receiving Outreach Program services were either single-parent (12 percent) or two-parent (6 percent) households with children.
• About a quarter (23 percent) of the clients served by both the Shelter and Outreach Programs were children under the age of 18. Children under five years of age represented 13 percent of the client population and youth between the ages of 6 and 17 represented 10 percent of those served. Young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 years represented another 10 percent of clients served.
• Children under 18 years of age comprised over a third (34 percent) of the Shelter Program population statewide, with the largest proportion of them under the age of six (19 percent) and 15 percent between 6 and 17 years of age.
• Of those receiving Outreach Program services, 11 percent were children under the age of 18.   

The full report is available for download at: http://uhfamily.hawaii.edu/publications/brochures/HomelessServiceUtilization2011.pdf