Recent studies indicate that the number of homeless people in the U.S. has risen by between 35% and 45% within the past two or so years. Furthermore, the number continues to rise.

That would mean, if there had been 10 homeless persons in the U.S. in the year 1999, there today would be 13 or 14. If there had been 100 homeless, today there would be 130 or 140. If there had been 100,000 homeless people in 1999, then there would be about 140,000 today.

It is estimated that 3.5 million is a reliable annual estimate of the number of perennial homeless heads in the U.S.

The reported population of Montana in the year 1998, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures, was 480,907 citizens. Vermont had 590,883 citizens. New Hampshire, 1.185 million. Arkansas, 2.538 million. Oklahoma, 3.35 million.

In fact, 27 States of the Union had reported populations, as of 1998, which did not attain or exceed the current homeless head count in the U.S.

Twenty-seven of the United States. More than half of the 50 United States had fewer citizens than the current homeless head count. In the United States.

Don’t give me that look. I know that numbers are existentially meaningless to us if the problem isn’t right in our faces. We’re not about to round up the homeless and give them a State of Their Own, although arguably they could use one. And besides, if the Homeless weren’t right in our faces, why would we do things like criminalize homelessness and panhandling, and build shitty shelters in poorly-lit, off-road locations, and publish letters-to-the-editor written by prissy fat-assed white ladies who quiver every time a badly-dressed man with a sunburned face takes a break in a public park?

Homelessness is obnoxious. So is domestic abuse. So is drug addiction. These problems seem unable to be solved or conquered. As a crisis hotline worker, I "deal with" all sorts, including people who need food and a safe place to sleep, and people who are caught up in horrific, repetitive cycles — sometimes of their own making — and who need a safe haven, free counseling, a little goddamned support, so on. Sometimes I walk away from my hotline shifts, feeling like Marcia Gay Harden screaming at Ed Harris in the film Pollock, "You NEED, you NEED, you NEED, you NEED!!"

Let’s put that aside for the moment, though, because there’s something else that needs to be recognized here: specifically, the fact that recent dramatic swells in homelessness statistics (and poverty, in general) indicate that something fiscally sinister is looming over our heads in the U.S., and it ain’t just a sudden dip in the availability of Spare Change. Who are these New Homeless? Where do they come from? Hmm.

The City of Berkeley reports a 40% increase in its homeless population over the last two years. New York: 42%. Do you believe it?

According to one very recent article: "the 2002 U.S. Conference of Mayors reported a 19% increase in requests for shelter due to homelessness, in 25 surveyed cities. Requests for shelter by families increased by 20%." Do you believe it?

In a nation where approximately 30% of the population is either living beneath or a step above (whatever that means) the formally recognized poverty line, how can we not believe these things? For years, the literacy rate of the U.S. has been so embarrassingly bad, in comparison to those of other First World nations, that the statistics have been routinely embellished, fudged, or finagled in published statements about it.

Here’s the real kicker of a question, though: Is This a Crisis? Yet?

If it is, it’s a tricky one. It’s not like, say, The AIDS Crisis, which got a ton of press and even more prescriptions, and which kind-of went away but isn’t as scary anymore even if the threat is still as bad as ever. It’s not like the AL QAEDA Crisis, which swept away Common Sense in a gigantic thunderstorm but only simmers steadily now in the frontal lobes of Fox News addicts. It’s certainly not like the SADDAM HUSSEIN Crisis, which was, well, fabricated but effective.

This Homelessness Crisis — if it is a crisis, you decide — is about people who need simple things, like Food. Jobs. Safety. Respect. Support. Tolerance. Recognition. Help. Money. Institutional mentoring. Medicine. Systematic hope. A government that cares about families and about normal people with regular human needs.

1998 Population of the City of Dallas, TEXAS: 2,050,865.

2003 Population of the State of Homeless: 3,500,000. And counting. They’d take Regime Change over Spare Change, I wager.

As a crisis hotline worker, I should NEVER have to say to someone homeless, "I’m sorry, I can’t help you."

I do say it, though. I say it right to their invisible faces, through the phone.