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		options		Sixty percent of the homeless shelters worked at jobs that paid less than $10 per hour, the survey said. The survey also noted that more than one-fourth of the 2,517 men in shelters in October were veterans.      While the overall number of homeless people in Minnesota has increased slightly, the number of people in shelters suffering from mental illness has more than doubled in the past 10 years, the survey showed. About 47 percent of Minnesota's homeless adults suffer from mental illness. But 85 percent of Minnesota's homeless adults suffer from mental illness, chronic substance abuse or physical disabilities that often result from brain injuries, said Greg Owen, Wilder's chief researcher.      "Veterans have higher mental health needs," he said. "At the same time, mental health services have been cut. And staffs are inadequately equipped to treat some of these problems."      "At times, we hear there are as many as 41 people waiting to get into Anoka Regional Treatment Center, but there's no waiting list for jail," said Nilsson. "People's mental conditions worsen, they commit petty crimes and they find themselves incarcerated.    "We close up institutional beds for people who desperately need them and our answer is to open up emergency shelters."      Wilder Research has been surveying Minnesota's homeless every three years since 1991. It is the only statewide study of the homeless done by any state on a regular basis, Owen said.      Paul Levy is at plevy@startribune.com.
		Families frequent area's shelters
		Copyright 2004 Star Tribune  Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
		February 28, 2004, Saturday, Metro Edition More than one-third of the homeless people in Minnesota's emergency shelters are children. And the adults staying at those shelters are almost as likely to be women as men, according to a survey of Minnesota's homeless released this week.      "When you ask the average person who they picture when they think of the homeless, I'm sure they don't realize that 64 percent of our homeless population is made up of children and women," Monica Nilsson, director of Minneapolis' Simpson Shelter, said Friday.      In fact, children made up 38.8 percent of the 7,811 homeless people questioned - 7,015 of them in emergency shelters and another 796 people who were not staying in formal shelter programs, according to the survey by Wilder Research Center in St. Paul.      The number of homeless families in Minnesota has tripled over the past 12 years. That count did not include the 600-plus Minnesotans who were either out on the streets, in detox or staying in places not considered formal shelters.
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