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Center for Social Policy
McCormack Graduate School
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Phone: (617) 287 5550
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Ranks of Homeless Children Growing
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Author(s):
David Abel, Globe Staff
Source(s):
Boston Globe, Page: B4 Section: Metro/Region
Date: December 10, 2002
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Daquan, 4, pointed a wood block at the head of his classmate Commitris and shouted: "Pow! Pow!"
But the other 4-year-old refused to die and the two boys started to argue. "You're dead!"
"No I'm not!"
Most boys play aggressively, but Daquan, Commitris, and their classmates often bring more anger
and hostility to day care than other kids their age. "They're acting out things they would see at
home - yelling, fighting, showing off guns," said teacher Jen Meighan.
The boys and their classmates at the Dorchester Community Children's Center are angry, in part,
because they can't go home. Home for them now is a temporary shelter in Boston.
As city officials spend the week compiling data from yesterday's annual census of the homeless,
there's one thing the survey is sure to show: Children are the fastest growing segment of the
homeless population.
This year, about 20,000 children in Massachusetts at one time will have been homeless. In last
year's Boston census, 1,325 children were counted as living either in shelters or on the
streets, nearly three times the number a decade ago and one-fifth of the overall homeless
population.
Statewide, there are at least 3,400 children homeless on a given day, about 500 more than this
time last year, advocates say.
"The basic reason more kids are homeless is because the number of families who are homeless
has so steeply increased," said Donna Haig Friedman, director of the Center for Social
Policy at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. "It's children who often pay the price
of policies like rental assistance being eliminated."
With a record 1,600 families now in state care, Friedman and others expect the city's census
to show a sharp rise in homeless children this year, half of them 5 or younger.
The increase comes at a time when state agencies have raised the bar for families to enter
homeless shelters and cut aid to the state's 74 shelters. To qualify for emergency assistance,
a family of three can earn no more than $15,024 a year, instead of $19,536, which had been
the cap since 2000.
"The question is what happens to all the kids who can't get a place in a shelter," said
Eliza Greenberg, director of Boston's Emergency Shelter Commission.
Many of them end up in foster care. Nationally, about 12 percent of homeless children are
placed in foster care, compared with about 1 percent of other children, according to the
Worcester Family Research Project.
Others end up hospitalized or in therapy. Homeless children are four times more likely to
be asthmatic, five times more likely to have stomach problems, and six times more likely to
have speech impediments, according to The Better Homes Fund in Newton.
Moreover, research shows about a quarter of them have witnessed violence in their family,
nearly 50 percent suffer from anxiety or depression, compared with about 18 percent of
other children, and twice as many exhibit aggressive behavior.
A decade ago, a group of child-care providers founded The Horizons Initiative, a nonprofit
organization to help homeless children cope with their status. Today, the group has set
up special play areas in 48 state shelters and they run two childcare centers for 126 of
the city's homeless.
"We have a waiting list long enough to easily fill two more centers," said Sue Heilman,
executive director of Horizons, adding they're hoping to expand.
In a well-stocked classroom at one of their shelters yesterday, Daquan and Commitris romped
around in a play area, wrestling and pretending to shoot one another.
Afterward, the two boys sat next to each other, smiling and making pictures of snow from
mashed soap bars. Asked what he was doing, Daquan said: "Having fun."
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