A great deal of media attention as well as public and private support has been focused this winter on the 200 or so homeless people who camp illegally on the American River, and appropriately so.

But as Michele Steeb, the CEO of St. John's shelter and Chet Hewitt, president and CEO of Sierra Health Foundation, wrote on our Viewpoints page Wednesday, the increasing number of homeless mothers and their children is a much more alarming trend in our community – one that gets too little attention.

A sustained local, state and national focus has helped to reduce the number of chronically homeless people. Some 2,300 units of permanent housing have been built in the Sacramento region in recent years, most of it for formerly homeless single adults, cutting those numbers dramatically.

But housing for poor families remains in desperately short supply. As Steeb and Hewitt wrote, St. John's shelter turns away 320 women and children every day. The county's two other shelters that cater to mothers and fathers with children, Sacramento Area Emergency Housing Center and Volunteers of America, report similar upticks in the number of families they must turn away every night as well.

And those numbers are likely to grow. Sacramento has approximately 230 emergency shelter beds for families. The majority are financed with state welfare funds that flow through the county, specifically CalWORKs dollars.

The governor's budget proposal includes deep cuts in welfare. It would deny all aid to parents who don't meet minimum federal work requirements within 24 months. It would even cut grants to children by $71 from an average of $463 to $392.

Those cuts are likely to have a direct impact on emergency shelter capacity.

Meanwhile, the federal government is putting the squeeze on shelters as well. Housing and Urban Development has established new policies that would reduce shelter stays to a maximum of 21 days, this in an area where there is a six- to 12-month waiting list for families to get into permanent housing.

In the current recession, government can't abandon its most vulnerable citizens, particularly children. At the same time, given the scope of the crisis, the private sector must step up in new ways as well.

While all shelter programs need donations of money, household goods, clothing and food, they also need volunteer help of all kinds. Every nonprofit working with the homeless needs people with computer skills to repair equipment, upload and train workers on new software.

They need public relations help and good writers to help draft grant applications or op-eds. They need volunteers with video skills and accounting knowledge.

They need community activists willing to advocate for affordable housing in their own middle-class and upscale neighborhoods.

Government has a big role to play in sheltering homeless families, but it cannot succeed without active support from the wider community.

The Bee's past stands

"Homeless families and kids constitute an estimated 45 percent of the national homeless population, and with the economic downturn, their numbers are growing daily."

– March 16, 2008

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