Exactly how many homeless will be depending on Dallas shelters this winter is difficult to determine. In warmer months, some of them survive in back seats of cars, under bridges and in vacant buildings without using shelters. What is happening in Dallas is being played out in cities throughout the country. And the number has grown by 25 percent in the last year, according to a September survey of 25 cities by the National Coalition for the Homeless. While the ranks of the homeless continue to swell .
Popular belief has it that Texas' homeless problem is rooted in the Rust Belt.
The jobless from Pittsburgh steel mills and Detroit auto factories, the theory goes, flocked to Houston and Dallas for work. When they didn't find it, they ended up on the streets. That perception is wrong. Increasingly, more of the homeless on Dallas streets, relief officials say, are from Dallas. The new homeless are changing the complexion of the streets.