Families only. No fathers.

Great Debates
21

Cites! Get yer cites here!

A recent study of homelessness found that 84% of homeless families were headed by a single mother. People in families make up about 1/3 of the homeless. Most of the rest are single adults.

From an interagency report presented to the Conference of Mayors in 1999.

I guess the 84% wold justify a “woman and children” shelter calling itself a “family” shelter. However, around here the “family” shelter is truly a family shelter, and even better they accept a self-labelled “family” without insisting on proof of marriage or parentage or any of that.

Do keep in mind in any of these debates that many homeless shelters are severely underfunded and have crappy facilities. They are usually doing the best they can with what they have, and it’s hard for them to be accommodating to unique situations (such as, say, giving a family with a father their own separate room).

22

No, but according to your link, there is a shelter in Richmond that will accept fathers along with their families. And there’s just no way to tell from the article if the needs of families which include fathers are met in the same proportion as the needs of families which don’t. We know that the needs of homeless families are not being completely met. We know that more shelters accept families without fathers than accept those with fathers. But from that article, we can’t tell if the 80% of the fatherless families are receiving shelter together and only 10% of those without are, or if 50% of each group are, or if 90% of those with fathers are receiving shelter and only 30% of those without are.