Family Shelter Entry and Re-entry During the Recession in Hennepin County: The Role of Race, Residential Location, and Family Earnings

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which shelter entry and re-entry increased during the Great Recession (December 2007–December 2009) in Hennepin County, Minnesota. Among successive cohorts of families entering the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), Black families were 23% more likely to enter shelter if they were in the 2008–2009 cohort and 28% more likely to enter shelter if they were in the 2010 cohort than if they entered SNAP in 2004–2005. In addition, families who left shelter in 2009 were 39% more likely and families leaving shelter in 2010 were 63% more likely to re-enter shelter than those leaving shelter in 2004–2006. Only a small part of the increases in shelter entry and shelter re-entry was explained by reductions in family earnings. This suggests that the increases in shelter entry and re-entry may have been caused by other factors, such as the decline in the availability of affordable housing.

Keywords:

• Homeless
• labor market
• minorities
• neighborhood
• affordability
• foreclosure

Notes

1. Author’s tabulations from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (2013).

2. The Black poverty rate in Hennepin County increased from 35.4% in 2005–2007 to 41.5% in 2009–2011, although the poverty rate of Whites increased from 7.2% to 9.5%. During the same period, the unemployment rate for adults age 22–59 increased from 14.6% to 17.1% for Blacks and from 3.8% to 6.2% for Whites. These estimates reflect author tabulations from the American Community Survey using the Integrated Public Use Micro-data System On-line Tabulator (Ruggles, Alexander, Goeken, & Schroeder, 2010).

3. Estimates from the Economic Policy Institute’s basic budget for a single parent and two children suggest that the Minneapolis-St Paul MSA was in the top 12% among all urban areas for total costs of living, and in the top 22% for rental housing costs in 2013 (Gould, Finio, Sabadadish, & Wesling, 2013).

4. Estimates from Burt (2001) suggest that 43% of clients with children staying in shelters in 1997 were Black, while author tabulations from the Current Population survey suggest that 26% of poor adults with children were Black in 1997. Similarly, (HUD, 2010) finds that 39% of the family shelter population was Black, compared to 24% of individuals in poor families in the 2010 American Community Survey (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2013).

5. The SNAP program provides electronic benefits to low-income households to use to purchase food. Families qualify for SNAP if their gross income falls below 130% and their income net of deductions falls below 100% of the poverty line (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2013).