Hidden homeless emerge as U.S. economy worsens

By Steve Gorman and Suzanne Hurt

SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) - Emergency shelters brimming with homeless people in California's capital are quietly turning away more than 200 women and children a night in a sign of the deteriorating U.S. economy.

The displaced individuals on waiting lists at St. John's Shelter and other facilities often turn instead to relatives or friends for temporary living quarters, perhaps moving into a spare room, garage or trailer. The less fortunate might sleep in their cars or a vacant storage unit.

They are the hidden homeless. And their ranks appear to be growing as rising joblessness and mortgage foreclosures take their toll in Sacramento and other U.S. cities, experts say.

U.S. President Barack Obama recognized the trend in his televised news conference this week, saying, "the homeless problem was bad even when the economy was good," and he vowed to bring greater government resources to bear to deal with it.

"It is not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours," he said.

A "tent city" of up to 200 homeless in Sacramento was thrust into the media spotlight last month as a symbol of the battered U.S. economy. California authorities said this week they would shut down the illegal settlement and find other shelter for its residents, most of them chronically homeless.

Homeless advocates say they expect such encampments, which already exist around the country, to spread as the housing crisis worsens and shelters fill up.

"I think there's a slight trickle of people who've been at risk of homelessness who are winding up in tent cities or knocking on shelter doors," said Michael Stoops, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington. "I expect a tremendous increase in homelessness over the next couple of years."

Stoops, who has worked with the homeless for 35 years, said the newly dispossessed often retain some income and seek initially to downsize or find cheaper accommodations.

WORST NIGHTMARE

"Their worst nightmare would be winding up on the streets, in a tent city or a shelter," he said. "That's the last stage. They will do everything they can before that happens to them."

Maria Romero, 52, who held a series of low-paying jobs over the years before steady work became hard to find, said she lived out of her automobile for a year before reluctantly moving to St. John's Shelter in January.

"I'd rather be by myself. My car was my own space," she said, adding she would never consider living in a tent city.

"It wouldn't be safe, especially for a single female," said Romero, a high school dropout forced by circumstance to live in a car or shelter more than once in her life.

Her experience illustrates the complexity of homelessness in America, where the most economically vulnerable are often the first to fall through the cracks during hard times.