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PART II. PRIORITY HOMELESS NEEDS Priority: Maintain, improve and expand (as needed) the capacity of housing, shelter and services for homeless individuals and families including integrated healthcare, employment services and other supportive services. Priority Analysis and Obstacles to Meeting Underserved Needs Homelessness is one of the most difficult problems facing the HOME Consortium jurisdictions. For many adults and children homelessness is a frightening and isolating experience. Homelessness typically occurs because housing is not affordable and/or there is insufficient income to weather a personal crisis such as loss of employment or a family illness and continue to pay for housing. Mental disabilities, domestic violence, and alcohol or drug addiction and other problems are contributing factors. Homeless people live in cars, parks, abandoned buildings, on the streets, in emergency shelters, doubled up with friends and family members, and in transitional housing. HUD's definition of homelessness is an individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence; or an individual who has a primary nighttime residence that is: 1) a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations (including welfare hotels, congregate shelters, and transitional housing for the mentally ill); 2) an institution that provides a temporary residence for individuals intended to be institutionalized; or 3) a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings. The 2009 Alameda County Homeless Count identified three distinct homeless populations: 1) literally homeless people who are residing on the streets, places not meant for human habitation, in shelter or in transitional housing program; 2) chronically homeless unaccompanied, disabled people who have been homeless for extended periods of time; and 3) hidden homeless people who are living temporarily with a friend or relative, in a motel, or facing eviction within seven days. The National Coalition for the Homeless reports (2007) 842,000 people are homeless on any given night nationally. About half of the individuals who experience homelessness over the course of a year live in family units; about 38% of these are children. The other 50% of people who are homeless on any given night are single adults. Most enter and exit the system fairly quickly (80 Nine percent use the system approximately five times a year for up to two months. The remainder, (10 essentially live in the homeless assistance system, or in a combination of shelters, hospitals, the streets, and jails and prisons. There is also runaway and throwaway youth homeless population. This population is of indeterminate size. A significant portion of these youth are gay and lesbian Strategic Plan FV2010 FV2014 City of Pleasanton Page IS