Theresa House Facts and Figures

2007-2008 Theresa House Statistics

-From July, 2007 to July, 2008 Theresa House housed 102 people, 53 of whom were children under the age of 18

-77.27% of Theresa House’s clients were experiencing first time homelessness

-Roughly 63% of households were from Minnesota; 53% of those households were from Blue Earth, Nicollet, and other Region 9 counties.

National Homelessness Statistics

November 17, 2008

-“From 2002 to 2007, the number of homeowners paying more than half of their income on housing increased from 1 in 18 mortgage holders to 1 in 9 mortgage holders…In 2007, of Minnesota’s 510,000 renting households, 1 in 5 paid more than half of their income on housing” (Minnesota Housing Partnership).

-“Between August 2007 and August 2008, average wages increased 3.7 percent, but the cost of groceries rose 7.5 percent and the cost of gasoline rose 35.6 percent” (Minnesota Housing Partnership).

-“In 2005, 13.3 percent of the U.S. population, or 38,231,521 million people, lived in poverty.  Both the poverty rate and the number of poor people have increased in recent years, up from 12.5% or 1.1 million in 2003 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2005). 36% of persons living in poverty are children; in fact, the 2004 poverty rate of 17.6% for children under 18 years old is significantly higher than the poverty rate for any other age group” (National Coalition for the Homeless, June 2007).

-“According to the Children’s Defense Fund, over nine million children in America have no health insurance, and over 90 percent of them are in working families” (National Coalition for the Homeless).

-“According to {Housing and Urban Development}, in recent years the shortages of affordable housing are most severe for units affordable to renters with extremely low incomes.  Federal support for low-income housing has fallen 49% from 1980 to 2003 (National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2005).  The lack of affordable housing has lead to high rent burdens (rents which absorb a high proportion of income), overcrowding, and substandard housing” (National Coalition for the Homeless).

-“For every one dollar spent on low income housing programs, the federal treasury loses  four dollars to housing-related tax expenditures, 75% of which benefit households in the top fifth of income distribution (Dolbeare, 1996)…Federal housing policy has not responded to the needs of low-income households, which is disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans” (National Coalition for the Homeless).