After all, using the Department of Housing and Urban Development definition of homelessness would have produced a very low number. That’s why the authors grabbed a different definition, one from the Department of Education, that was sure to increase the numbers to create a crisis.

A well publicized report this week that an estimated 1.5 million American children experienced homelessness in 2005-06 did not use the federal definition of homelessness. Instead, it used a different definition that grossly inflated the actual number.

The report — released Tuesday by the National Center on Family Homelessness and reported by numerous news organizations, including FOXNews.com — estimated that one out of every 50 children in America experienced "homelessness" during that two-year span.

But rather than using the definition of homelessness established by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Massachusetts-based organization used a standard adopted by the Department of Education that includes children who are "doubled up," or children who share housing with other persons due to economic hardship or similar reason.
The difference? About 1,170,000 children.

An estimated 330,000 sheltered and unsheltered homeless children were identified in HUD's July 2007 report to Congress as those who are "literally homeless," or those living in homeless facilities or in places not meant for human habitation, according to the report.

The remaining 1.17 million — those who are precariously housed or who may be doubled up with friends and relatives or paying extremely high proportions of their resources for rent — are not included in HUD's report.

Let’s consider what this really meant.

Did Mom take the kids to grandma’s house when she left their dad? Then the kids are homeless under the definition. Ditto if their folks are paying high rent. For that matter, every kid who evacuated from New Orleans and the surrounding area qualified as homeless – even if their home was undamaged and they were out of their place for as little as a week.

Now please understand, I’m not unsympathetic to folks in such situations, especially the latter one. My wife and I have been out of our home for six months following Hurricane Ike, and are still a couple of weeks from getting back in. But were we really “homeless” in 2005 when we were out of our home for four days when we evacuated for Hurricane Rita?

But what I find really interesting is that the folks responsible for the story admit that they chose the definition in order to inflate the number. Requiring that someone actually be homeless if one is to count them as homeless is just too strict a requirement. Want to bet it is all about squeezing some more taxpayer cash out of the government?