Ohio Car Donation Can Help America’s Fastest Growing Homeless Population

The Invisibility of children and families in need

Is our government’s current definition of ‘homeless’ accurate?

There exists a major discrepancy in how homeless children in America are counted. While the most recent number of homeless children tallied by The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) amounts to about 138,149, these are the children who were counted by hand as living on the streets, in cars or in shelters during an annual point-in-time survey. This leaves many adolescents uncounted in surveys that could lead to better funding for relief programs.

However, the U.S. Department of Education considers homelessness as not having a stable address, which is approximately 1.1 million school children. This difference in how homeless children are counted (those who are counted during the point-in-time count versus those without a stable address) has created a discrepancy of more than 1 million homeless children.

Even worse, a report from The National Center on Family Homelessness has indicated that there may be as many as 2.5 million homeless children in the US. That means one child in every 30 is homeless.

In contrast to HUD’s number, that’s a difference of 2.3 million unaccounted homeless children.

Why homeless children remain unseen

You won’t usually see homeless children sleeping on benches or in the streets. Instead, they wind up crashing on sofas at families’, friends’ or relatives’ houses as they hop from address to address. Other children may end up staying in motels or sleeping in all-night diners. Because of this, they aren’t counted during HUD’s point-in-time surveys.

Additionally, a majority of the funds and programs designed to help the homeless are geared toward housing and employment programs, which are usually aimed at helping chronically homeless adults.

Your Ohio car donation will help homeless children in all of the communities we serve

If you’d like to help fund programs designed to offer children and low-income families a healthy, secure life, please make an Ohio car donation. If you have an unused motorcycle, truck, RV, or tractor, we can arrange free same-day towing to pick it up, and you could potentially make more money from a tax-deductible donation than you could selling by selling your vehicle in the classifieds.

When you give your vehicle to Volunteers of America, you’re funding our shelters, affordable housing, and community services.

Please, donate to Volunteers of America today.