According to a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report, the number of homeless people declined in Iowa over the last year. The report lists two different figures.  One is the total number of homeless people on a particular day.   In Iowa, that number is about three-thousand.  The report also show the chronically homeless, and that number is 270, which is a little lower than last year’s count of 315.

The report’s numbers cover those people in homeless shelters and those not sheltered.  It was compiled through research across the country.      The trend over the last five years is that the number of homeless in the U.S. has very slowly, but steadily declined.

Washington County does not have any large-scale shelter facilities for the homeless, but several resources are available , and more are as close as Iowa City.