Study finds more than 700,000 homeless in the U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There were an estimated 754,000 homeless people in the United States, in shelters or living on the streets on a single night in January 2005, U.S. officials said in a report to Congress released on Wednesday.

The snapshot of a "point in time" and a second count over a three-month period of the same year are results of a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) estimate of the homeless population in the United States.

According to the study, from February to April 2005, an estimated 704,000 people in the United States used homeless shelters or transitional housing.

During that period, 47 percent of people living in homeless shelters were single adult men. Nearly one quarter were children 17 or younger. Less than 2 percent of the homeless population was 62 or older, compared with 15 percent of the total U.S. population.

Among other findings, the report said about 59 percent of the people in homeless shelters were members of minority groups. Forty-five percent of the homeless were African Americans, the report said.

Based on a sampling of communities across the United States, the study concluded that 24 percent of all adults in homeless shelters were disabled.

HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said the data can be used as a tool to gauge the extent of homelessness and help communities develop solutions.

"Understanding homelessness is a necessary step to ending it, especially for those persons living with a chronic condition such as mental illness, an addiction or a physical disability," Jackson said in a statement.

"This first annual assessment offers all of us a more complete picture of, not only how many persons and families are homeless, but critical information about their needs," Jackson said.

HUD said the study will serve as a baseline for annual homelessness estimates it intends to issue from now on.

Advocates for the homeless say an estimate based on a point in time does not take into account homeless people living in other circumstances such as motels or those "doubling up" in someone else's home.

"I think we spend way too much time, energy and money in counting homeless people," said Michael Stoops, Director of the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless.

"Many cities in this country are trying to give the impression that things are better than they really are, that homelessness is decreasing. But in reality, homelessness continues to increase regardless of who is in the White House or who controls Congress," Stoops said in a telephone interview.

"It's okay to count homeless people. But we need to make sure that we're housing homeless people and not just doing our information gathering game."