A massive study on homelessness, billed as the most comprehensive ever, shows a third of America's ever-swelling population of homeless people are families with children. 'The fastest growing population of homeless people are families with children who work,' said Terri Scofield, of New York state, reacting to the report. Ms Scofield and her three-year-old son Jesse lived in their car, ate food at McDonald's and 'just kept pumping quarters into public phones to try to get the paperwork sorted out at the county social services department,' which she says had accidentally cancelled her welfare payments. One out of four homeless Americans is a child, according to the report released on Wednesday by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. A third of the homeless population are military veterans. 'This survey is important because it paints the most detailed picture we've ever had of America's homeless population,' said the department's head, Andrew Cuomo, speaking at the House of Ruth, a transitional housing facility for homeless families in Washington. Two thirds of the 4,207 homeless people surveyed said they had chronic health problems, but 55 per cent had no medical insurance. 'Poor people's inability to recover from health conditions to a level that would enable them to work is a major cause,' said health policy analyst Bob Reeg, of the Washington-based Coalition for the Homeless. 'Lack of access to health services and lack of universal healthcare coverage are both large factors,' he said. The coalition's executive director, Mary Ann Gleason, does not fault the American economic system. 'This is a remarkably successful system and I believe Americans are generous,' she said. 'But unfortunately there are a lot of politicians and talk show hosts who spend a lot of time trying to tell us that homelessness is the fault of the people who are suffering from it.' The federal Government could do more to ensure the funds it gave to states and cities reached homeless people, she said. 'There are 36 federal programmes for which homeless folks are eligible but not receiving services.' These included federal block grants to the states for mental health services, education programmes for young children, maternal and child healthcare and welfare itself, Ms Gleason said. Martha Burt, lead author of the report and a principal associate at the Urban Institute, a non-profit think-tank, agreed that public agencies had the capacity to solve the problem but simply were not doing it. 'In fact, we do know a lot of what we can do for homeless people . . . and we just have not done it,' she said. Ms Scofield said her son might have suffered from their experience of homelessness. 'It was very hard on Jesse - he was old enough to be friends with the kid next door, old enough to realise we were giving away his toys because we could only keep what we could fit in the car,' she said. She and Jesse at one time tried staying at a shelter, but that lasted only one night. 'It was so horrible. There was no doorknob. I had to stick a rag in the door. And there were all kinds of scary noises,' she said. Ms Scofield now works as a paralegal, and she and her son are no longer homeless, but she worries for those who still need help from society. 'Because of welfare reforms, so many single mums with kids have been kicked off the rolls and ended up with low-wage, temporary jobs that are a dime a dozen. You can be replaced so quickly if you have one car breakdown, or if your child is sick and can't go to daycare,' she said. 'You make enough to disqualify you for aid but not enough to pay rent,' she added. 'Most of us will just always choose to feed our kids and just sweet talk the landlord. But there's only so long you can do that.' About 700,000 people in the United States are homeless on any single given night, but, as of 1994, about 12 million adults had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives, 6.6 million of them in the preceding five years, according to estimates cited by the American Journal of Public Health.
