More recently, the country has witnessed a surge in families experiencing homelessness. Here is an example of one such family. Luis was a teenager; he faced hardships that no child should have to endure. Luis lost his father and brother in the same year due to health-related issues. He still had the support of his mother and sisters, but caring for three small children alone became a burden on his mother. The family faced homelessness and eventually, had to live on the streets for a period of time. They were fortunate to be able to find a place to live, but his family turned to collecting empty cans and bottles on the street in order to make ends meet. As if these struggles were not hard enough, Luis lost his mother a few years later. Any ordinary person may have given up hope, but Luis recalls that positive memories of his mother helped him get through these challenging moments in his life. He eventually moved in with his sister and completed high school. Luis is now an active youth disciple at his church and uses his life experience to uplift others.

Families are a newer face to homelessness that run the gamut, due to situations regarding financial instabilities, not having access to health care, unemployment, lack of affordable housing and the recent trend of foreclosures. However, the youth have their own face to homelessness as well, such as those who either run away from home or age out of the foster care system with no guidance and resort to “couch surfing.” This is a group that is blending in with their counterparts in our school systems, making their situation invisible.

Jason Mercado is homeless and currently lives in a homeless shelter with over 40 others. He is one of the many tragedies of this hard economy who has entered into the realm of the impoverished. However, “down” he may be, but “out” he certainly isn’t. On that day Jason told me about the business he had started — “Just Cookies.”

So here I am on a random weeknight talking to a homeless man about some business he has created. I must admit to being skeptical because I have heard just about every story under the sun. People hear I appear on CNN and suddenly people think I am the Pope where they confess every fleeting business they have ever had with the hope that I will turn it from a far-fetched notion into the next Google. However, then he started to tell me about his plan and execution:

• He partnered with a local community-based organization which allowed him to use their kitchen for free to make cookies and baking goods.
• He took a few free business courses through local community organizations to learn the basics of business and applied those principals to his business.
• He assembled a small team of volunteers from his community to help him make, produce, and market his business in return for a future paid position if the business takes off.
• He continued to increase and tap into his network to raise the limited, but still much needed, $100 to $200 to purchase the products and start operations.
• He printed some free business cards with a custom made logo design which was donated and he handed me one on the spot.

He was a walking, living example of one of the primary principles I teach:

All people were born with the same three things — the mind, the body, and the earth underneath your feet. If you look around you right now, nothing around you didn’t come from one of those three things. If you are sitting on a chair, that chair originally started as a vision in someone’s mind. That person then used his body as a tool to manipulate materials which came from the earth and form the chair. No matter how little resources you think you have, you always have what you need to create success as long as you have access to your mind, your body, the earth, and a healthy helping of faith to make all things work together for the greater good!

Behind Ms. Jenkins stood fellow actors who portray street-tough newsboys in the Broadway show. In front of her stood a cast of young people, most of them teenagers, who live at the nearby Covenant House, a shelter, and who had been in the audience.

“I was this little black girl growing up in Brooklyn dreaming about singing on a world stage,” Ms. Jenkins said. “I was lucky enough to have parents who helped nurture that dream.”

Ms. Jenkins then turned to the 10 audience members from Covenant House, who are among the 300 people who sleep at the shelter, just two blocks from the theater.

“All of you have so much adversity in your lives and yet I hear you talk about your dreams,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “You are my heroes.”

In “Newsies,” where singing and dancing newsboys — many of them homeless — organize a successful strike against greedy media titans, Ms. Jenkins plays Medda Larkin, a burlesque queen who helps protect and shelter them.

In real life, Ms. Jenkins helps protect and shelter the residents of Covenant House, a charity for homeless and runaway youths. Since 2003, Ms. Jenkins, with assistance from other Broadway stars, has raised nearly $10 million for the charity through concert performances and other benefits.

She has been on its board for three years and is a regular at Covenant House events and a frequent visitor to the residents.

“She has really helped us keep our doors open,” Kevin Ryan, the president of Covenant House, said. “For years, she has been the same maternal figure for street kids that she now plays in the theater — hers is truly a case of art imitating life.”

In a few days, he would attend Augusta Technical College training to be a police officer. The rest of his time was spent roaming the streets looking for shelter for the night.
“I got to know downtown Augusta real well,” said the Conyers, Ga., native.
Since 2009, Jones has gone from a military stint in Iraq to being homeless on the streets of Augusta to recently getting his badge as a Richmond County Sheriff’s deputy. When thinking about the last year, now that their family is back together again, Jones’ wife, Atiah, acknowledges how rough things were.
“We’ve been through a lot,” she said. “But I never doubted him. And look at him now.”
Jones, 25, was hired by the sheriff’s office in February after graduating from the 18-week Peace Officers Training Academy. He now patrols some of the same streets that he found himself sleeping on less than a year ago.
His journey from homelessness to police officer began after he returned from a one-year deployment in Iraq in June 2010. Jones got the call that his reserve unit was being sent overseas a year earlier while he was in school pursuing a criminal justice degree with the intention to go into law enforcement. During his first leave he married Atiah, mother of his 2-year-old son Bukhari.
After Jones returned to Conyers, he moved his family to Charlotte, N.C., to look for work and continue school. He moved his young family into a house with the little money he had saved from his time in Iraq, even though his mother had surgery while he was gone, which took a lot of it. That move would be the beginning of his long slide.

The number of homeless people in the region dipped slightly — by 0.4 percent — to 11,830 this year, according to the annual “point-in-time” homeless survey released Wednesday by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

In the District, the number of homeless families soared 18 percent and homelessness increased 6 percent overall, the report said. The District is struggling with a $7 million shortfall in services for the homeless after a loss of federal funding. The city’s family shelter is filled to capacity, and more than 100 families are living in motels along New York Avenue NE at an average cost of $100 a night.

“The family situation is a crisis in the District,” said Kelly Sweeney McShane, the executive director of Community of Hope, a nonprofit group that provides housing and services to 250 local families. Advocates such as McShane are urging the D.C. government to find more funds to move families out of the motels and into subsidized apartments as the budget debate goes on.

The State Coordinator for Homeless Education Programs expects the numbers statewide to increase another 30 percent when 2011-2012 data comes out, and the numbers locally are likely to be part of the reason.

The Kent Intermediate School District tracks numbers for schools in the entire county and says numbers continue to rise.

It’s a story you’ll only see on WZZM 13 News.

WZZM 13 News stumbled across this issue after a co-worker saw a school bus pull up to a motel near the station and drop off some students. After numerous calls to school districts, motels, area shelters and homeless assistance programs, we found that schools have seen an increase in homeless children in the last three years due to a few factors.

But it’s important to point out that the majority of these children aren’t living under bridges in West Michigan; their families have been forced to move around and stay where they can. JoAnna McMurray lives in a motel with her husband and son, a first-grader.

“I park at Walmart; that’s 24 hours,” she said. “I park at Starbucks; that’s 24 hours.”

For two years, Machado, 40, has been homeless after losing a well-paying job at a doctor’s office. She was let go shortly after the economy tanked. She didn’t have a degree to fall back on.

“I was not sleeping,” she said. “I would go days without sleeping, days without eating, because I wasn’t getting a call about a job. I wasn’t even getting calls for an interview.”

Machado decided to go to college at USF Sarasota-Manatee with only a computer and a car.

“I’m definitely more fortunate than a lot of people who are homeless, because I have a car,” she said.

Machado keeps all of her belongings in her Hyundai. She’s been able to afford to keep a vehicle by dog walking or house-sitting on the side. For two years, she has stayed in her car or with friends when possible. She’s taken showers in her school’s bathroom and caught sleep any chance she could.

“I don’t sleep more than three or four hours at a time, and most of the time three or four hours a day,” she said.

She says she would find a nice spot to sleep, such as a beach, when she could.

“Throw out a lawn chair, read a book, fall asleep,” she said. “Nobody questions it.”

Many of her professors didn’t even know about her situation. They found out this past weekend when she was named “Most Outstanding Graduate” in her class.

The 2012 Homeless Outreach Street Population Estimate found 169 homeless people on the streets of the Boogie Down, a 47% increase over last year, officials announced recently.

Meanwhile, the homeless population of the subway system jumped 28%, from 1,275 to 1,634, and the citywide total rose 23%, from 2,648 to 3,262.

Every year, watchdog groups blast the survey as inaccurate because the city makes no effort to count homeless people hidden under bridges, in vehicles and in abandoned buildings.

But the Department of Homeless Services, in the past, has cited the survey to tout decreases. Despite the 2012 bump, the citywide homeless population is down 26% compared to 2005, the first year of the count, noted Seth Diamond, DHS commissioner.

“The numbers went in a direction we didn’t want,” he said. “But we remain confident in our network of services and our efforts to reach people on the street.”

Diamond insists the survey is the best homeless population measure in the country and said DHS has made progress under Mayor Bloomberg.

He declined to blame the 2012 uptick on the economy.

In the five boroughs, just 1 in 2,506 people are homeless, compared to 1 in 820 in Miami and 1 in 292 in Los Angeles.

“We report the numbers when they go up and when they go down,” said Diamond. “That should give people confidence that the city is doing an honest and transparent job.”

But Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst at Coalition for the Homeless, called the annual DHS estimate unreliable.