Jessie's House

At Jessie’s House, family homelessness takes on a very human face as each day we work to help parents find safe, affordable housing for themselves and their children. At the same time as we focus on these individual families, we believe it’s important to keep the bigger picture in mind. Family homelessness and the lack of affordable housing for low income families are extreme and growing problems in our state and the nation as a whole. These statistics show both the size of the problem and some of its root causes.

In Massachusetts

Approximately 1,320 families, including more than 2,800 children, are in family shelters in Massachusetts. The state’s shelters generally are at least 95% full on any given night.
An estimated 10,000 additional families in Massachusetts lack permanent housing. They are doubled up with relatives, friends, or in some cases, living in cars. Some families spend the summers camped out in state parks.
More than one in five homeless parents (21%) are working while living in shelter and trying to find permanent housing.
Massachusetts is the third least affordable state in the country for renters. Tenants accessing the Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program have a gross annual income of $10,273 or $856 per month. Yet the median fair market value rent in the state for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,138.
Among renters with extremely low incomes in our state, 51.3% spend 50% or more of their incomes on rent. The generally accepted standard for housing affordability is that housing should cost no more than 30% of a family’s income.
To qualify for shelter at a facility funded by the MA Department of Transitional Assistance, a family of four can have a maximum income of $20,400.

In the United States

Thirty-five percent of the homeless population in the U.S. are families with children, which is the fastest growing segment of the homeless population.
There is a profound lack of affordable housing for low income families throughout the country. This is particularly true for families whose incomes put them in the extremely low income category. These are families earning less than 30% of the median income for the metropolitan area or rural county where they live. In the 2003 American Housing Survey, 7.7 million extremely low income renter households were identified but there were only just over 6 million rental units affordable to them.
In no town, city, or state in America can an individual or family working full-time and earning the minimum wage, or receiving assistance under the Supplemental Security Income or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs afford a one- or two-bedroom apartment at the fair-market rental rate established by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 32% of requests for emergency shelter by homeless families went unmet during 2004.
Many shelters do not accept families with adolescent boys, or two-parent families. Over half of the cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2004 reported that families may have to break up in order to be sheltered. Rather than be separated, these families will endure temporary living conditions that are often less safe and stable than shelters.
One in four U.S. jobs pays less than a poverty-level income. At the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, someone working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year earns $10,700 a year, which is almost $6,000 below the federal poverty line for a family of three.
Since 2000, the number of Americans living below the poverty line at any one time has risen steadily. Thirteen percent, or 37 million Americans, now are officially poor.