Economy putting more children on the streets

The economic downturn in northwest Indiana is putting more children out on the streets, as some flee troubled homes and others find themselves homeless along with their families.\nHomeless shelters in the heavily industrial region are crowded with families, and a shelter for runaway children in Porter County is seeing record numbers, the Post-Tribune of Merrillville reported Wednesday.\nThe Crisis Center, in Gary's Miller area, annually shelters about 280 children ages six to 18, usually placed there by courts.\nBut Executive Director Shirley Caylor said more preteens are coming to the center of their own accord through the Safe Place program. In the last two years, the number of Safe Place clients using the Crisis Center has increased 39 percent.\nThe center is a temporary shelter. Children stay an average of 37 days while they try to work out their problems.\n"The economy is part of it," Caylor said. "Whenever there's stress on parents, kids feel it.Sometimes parents become abusive.Sometimes whole families become homeless living in a car."\nAt the Spring Valley homeless shelter in Valparaiso, 17 children, with their single parents, fill the center's eight rooms. In 2002, 51 percent of the people living in Spring Valley were children -- more than half under age six.\n"Children are becoming the largest percentage of the homeless population. They're the fastest growing segment of the homeless," said program director Tom Isakson. "Because of high rents and low wages, families are being hit the hardest."\nIt takes more than minimum wage to afford a one or two-bedroom apartment that's "decent, safe and sanitary" in every state, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.\nThat means households headed by adults who can only find low-paying, unskilled service jobs are precariously close to the street, Isakson said.\n"One little slip can cause homelessness. You have a bad week at work and don't get all your hours in, or your car breaks down, or you miss a week, or you make a poor choice ... you're on the edge of homelessness every day," he said.\nIn Christine Miller's case, the slip was literal. After she tripped on a step and broke her foot last summer, the 33-year-old single mother lost work as a cashier and eventually lost the apartment she shared with her three children ages 6 to 9 1/2.\nMiller is working again, but at $6.75 an hour, it's difficult to save up for an apartment.\n"I want to go to school to become a surgical technician. But for now, everything I earn gets put up," she said.\nMany of the parents who came to the shelter "could have put their lives together if we could have given them a launching pad," Isakson said.\nOfficials at homeless shelters in Lake County say they have not seen any increase in the number of children there.\nIn a 2001 survey of 27 American cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that families comprise 40 percent of the homeless population.