Fact List

• On any given day in Mercer County, over 1200 people experience homelessness. (Homeless Resource Advisory Council, HRAC, COC 2008)
  
  
• Homeless survey snapshots from February 2002 through August 2004 by HRAC show 3 relatively consistent numbers of sheltered homeless in Mercer County: See links to recent surveys. (2003 Survey) (2004 Survey)
  
  
• Over the course of a year, more than 3,000 men, women, and children in Mercer County receive services in the homeless system. (Mercer County Homeless Resources Advisory Council (HRAC)
  
  
• Approximately 20% of homeless children do not attend school regularly. (National Center on Family Homelessness)
  
  
• Homeless children are 3 times more likely than other children to have emotional of behavioral problems. (National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty)
  
  
• Homeless children are twice as likely to experience hunger than non-homeless children. (National Center on Family Homelessness)

• New Jersey has been one of the least affordable states in the country for the last eight years. (2000-2008 NLIHC “Out of Reach Reports”)
  
  
• The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Mercer County is $1,120. (HUD Fair Market Rents 2007)
  
  
• A person making minimum wage ($7.15) in New Jersey would have to work 17 hours a day, 7 days a week or 120 hours per week to afford a 2 bedroom apartment in Mercer County.
  
  
• Full-time workers earning $8/hour net $1,252 per month. If they spend $1,120 of their income on an average two-bedroom apartment, they are left with only $132 a month for food, clothing, child care, and other basic costs.
  
  
• A wage earner should make $44,800 to afford housing in Mercer County.
  
  
• 20% of Mercer households earn less than $25,000 - 14,218 households in the suburbs and 11,801 in Trenton. (2000 Census, Housing and Community Development Network of NJ)
  
  
• In 2000, 20% of New Jersey residents earned $25,000 or less per year. (New Jersey State Department of Labor)

• Government entities spend approximately $75 per night, or about $2,300 a month, to place one family in an area low-budget motel or homeless shelter. (Mercer County Board of Social Services - 2005)
  
  
• The Mercer County Board of Social Services alone spends more than $8-$12 million per year for emergency services.
  
  
• 40.4% of homeless people visit hospital emergency rooms at least once a year. (American Journal of Public Health)
  
  
• Homeless people spend, on average, 36% longer as inpatients than non-homeless people. The average cost of this increase is $2,414 per hospitalization. (New England Journal of Medicine, June 11, 1998)
  
  
• A bed in a New Jersey state prison averages $28,000 per year (NJ Department of Corrections)

• 57% of lower income households in Mercer County pay more than the recognized standard of 30% of income for housing. (US CENSUS 2006)
  
  
• According to the 2004 Gaps Analysis of the Continuum of Care, there is an inventory of 1,966 households in emergency, transitional and permanent supportive housing in Mercer County and an unmet need of 2079 household units. Of the 2079 homeless need figure 792 are single individuals and 1287 are households with children. (2004 Trenton/Mercer Continuum of Care)