On any given night in Minnesota, as many people as the population of Sartell are without a home.
A report last week from Wilder Research estimates 15,000 people are homeless in Minnesota on any given night and about 40,000 people were homeless at some point in 2015.
That's down 9 percent since the group's last study in 2012 and the first drop in a decade, said Michelle Decker Gerrard, co-director of the Minnesota Homeless Study and Wilder senior research manager.
Though encouraging, advocates say far too many people are living on the streets, sleeping in shelters or on a friend's couch because they have no better alternatives.
"There has been a lot of efforts across the state to reduce homelessness in our population, and it does appear some of those efforts are paying off," Gerrard said. "But the most vulnerable in our whole population, with the least access to resources, tend to lose their housing first when the economy tanks. (The numbers) aren't down as much as we'd like them to be."
[For more of this story, written by Stephanie Dickrell, go to http://www.sctimes.com/story/n...y-homeless/93978182/]
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