The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released its new 2008 Annual Homeless Assessment Report Thursday, and it concludes that the number of homeless families, particularly those living in suburban and rural areas, increased.
The report noted that while the number of homeless individuals in shelters in 2008 was about the same as in 2007, the number of people in families increased by nine percent to 516,700.
Family homelessness increased most especially in suburban and rural areas, by nearly 56 percent.  Further, the reports notes that during the same time, the number of homeless individuals in suburban and rural areas increased by nearly 34 percent.
According to the report, homeless persons in shelters and on the street continued to be most heavily concentrated in urban areas.  One in five people homeless on a single night in January were located in Los Angeles, New York and Detroit.
While the report compared data between 2007 and 2008, it notes that early signs suggest that the economic crisis may be affecting trends in homelessness nationally.
According to the Report, a greater share of people accessing the homeless system in 2008 came from stays with friends and family and from places where they had lived a year or more, suggesting that people who had been stably housed were becoming homeless after exhausting their housing options.
