Statistics About Homelessness and Domestic Violence

Homelessness

• …[A]bout 700,000 people are homeless on any given night, …[and] about twelve million people in the U.S. have been homeless at some point in their lives. ("How Many People Experience Homelessness?" National Coalition on Homelessness. February 1999.)
• Most people who are homeless…don't have the training to hold jobs that pay more than minimum wage…[but] a single parent with one child needs to make $9.25 an hour to maintain a "basic standard of living" in Oakland. (San Francisco Living Wage Commission, 1998.)
• [Many homeless] people need in- or out-patient programs to help them manage serious mental illnesses. In the last thirty years, the majority of California's state mental institutions have been closed…, [and] alternative programs have not been created…. (Khalil Abdus-Samad, "Yielding to Stereotypes," Street Sheet, February 1999.)
• Current TANF benefits and food stamps combined are below the poverty level in every state… ("Why Are People Homeless?" National Coalition on Homelessness. February 1999.)
• Poor women who are in domestic violence situations often have to chose [sic] between staying with their batterer or becoming homeless. In a 1998 survey of homeless parents, 22% said they had left their last place of residence to escape domestic violence. (Homes for the Homeless, 1998.)
• It is estimated that 22 percent of all homeless people are children…raised by single mothers. …[M]ost of these women are young…[and] are likely to have histories of substance abuse, domestic violence and/or mental illness. ("Strengthening Homeless Families," U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1996.)

Domestic Violence

• Every 9 seconds a woman is battered in the United States. (American Medical Association, 1995.)
• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between ages 15 and 44 in the United States—more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. (Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1991.)
• Fifteen hundred American women are murdered by husbands or boyfriends each year. (Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1996.)
• Of women who reported being raped and or physically assaulted since the age of 18, 76% were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabitating partner, date, or boyfriend. (U.S. Department of Justice, 1998.)
• Intimate violence is primarily a crime against women - in 1998, females were the victims in 72% of intimate murders and the victims of about 85% of nonlethal intimate violence. (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999.)
• Women of all cultures, races, occupations, income levels, and ages are battered - by husbands, boyfriends, lovers and partners. (Surgeon General Antonia Novello, as quoted in Domestic Violence: Battered Women, publication of the Reference Department of the Cambridge Public Library, Cambridge, MA.)
• Domestic violence occurs in approximately 30% to 40% of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender relationships, which is the same percentage of violence that occurs in heterosexual relationships. (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Domestic Violence website: www.rainbowdomesticviolence.itgo.com, 2000.)
• 90% of all family violence defendants are never prosecuted, and one-third of the cases that would be considered felonies if committed by strangers are filed as misdemeanors (a lesser crime). (News from U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, September 2, 1993.)
• At least 3.3 million children between the ages of 3 and 19 are at risk of exposure to parental violence every year. (Jaffe, Wolfe, Wilson, Children of Battered Women, Sage Publications, 1990.)
• Between 50 and 70% of men who abuse their female partners also abuse their children. (M.A. Strauss & R.J. Gelles, Physical Violence in American Families, 1990.)