Since becoming homeless in the spring, the hardest questions Ruth Bowie has had to answer have come from her two young sons.

"When are we going to go home?" and "When am I going to have my own room?" they ask. "Soon" is Bowie's answer -- and she hopes she's right.

After she fell behind on the rent at Iroquois Homes, Bowie and her sons, Anthony Bowie, 6, and Steven Bedford, 3, lost their apartment in March. Since then they have stayed with a friend and are now sharing the bottom of a bunk bed in her sister's apartment.

"I could deal with it, if it was just me," Bowie, 31, said of living with her sister and her sister's four children.

Bowie and her sons are examples of the fastest-growing group among the homeless -- families headed by single mothers.

Twenty years ago families made up about 1 percent of the homeless population in the United States, said Dr. Ellen Bassuk, president of the National Center on Family Homelessness in Massachusetts. Now they number about 500,000, accounting for 34 percent of the homeless. Of those families, 70 percent to 90 percent are headed by single mothers, Bassuk said.

Marlene Gordon, executive director of Coalition for the Homeless in Louisville, said the numbers are similar in the city, with families -- most of them headed by single mothers -- making up about a third of the homeless population.

Before the mid-1980s, there were not significant numbers of homeless families, except during the Depression, Bassuk said.

"This is a new social issue. And a very troubling one, because so many young children are involved," she said.

Each year 1.35 million children, with an average age of under 6, are homeless, according to the New York City nonprofit Homes for the Homeless.

A person is considered homeless if they lack a regular or adequate place to sleep or sleep in a shelter or someplace not intended for sleeping.

'Hidden homeless'

In 1993 there were just over 1,000 homeless children in the Jefferson County Public Schools system. At the end of last school year there were more than 6,600, said Anne Malone, coordinator of the system's Homeless Families with Children Program. While Malone didn't have detailed demographics on the families, experts say the majority are headed by single mothers.

Gordon calls families like Bowie's "the hidden homeless," because they aren't on the streets, but instead are in places such as shelters or friends' homes.

Bowie, who has worked as a cook since she was 18, said her job at Levy Restaurants at Churchill Downs is seasonal. When she is working, Bowie said, the money is good, but when she isn't, it is hard to find another job for part of the year.

She said she hopes to get her General Educational Development certificate and study culinary arts at Sullivan University.

As for the boys' fathers, she said, "I basically really just don't deal with them at all."

Lack of income and a shortage of affordable housing are generally recognized as the main causes of homelessness. But drug and alcohol addiction, domestic violence, lack of education and divorce also play roles, said Gordon.

In addition to economic problems, run-ins with the law, such as arrests for bad checks, selling drugs and prostitution are not uncommon among the homeless, said Gordon. "It's just desperate people in desperate circumstances."

Many never learned basic life skills, such as not buying things until you have the money for them, and others make bad choices, said Gordon. Because the homeless often have no stable address, it isn't uncommon for them to be unaware of legal charges filed against them.

When informed by a reporter last week that there is a warrant out for her arrest on theft charges, Bowie said she was unaware of the warrant and unsure what it was for, but planned to take care of it by finding out what the charges were and explaining her side of the matter.

Regina Frierson said she lost her home and three children because of drug and alcohol addiction.

Child Protective Services took her children, all under 8 years old, because she was too busy getting drunk and doing drugs to care for them, she said.

In 2002 she was found guilty of possession of marijuana and has a court hearing tomorrow on a charge of possession of a controlled substance.

Her oldest child is now 17, the youngest 14. Frierson, who is 36, said she visits once a week with her children, who live with relatives. Frierson fears she could lose all contact with her children if she returns to substance abuse.

Frierson entered a drug and alcohol recovery program at Wayside Christian Mission in May. Her home is a bottom bunk in a small room that she shares with three other women.

It's a place she never imagined she would call home.

Long-term cost

Some of the costs of homelessness don't show up for years.

While they do well early on, a third of the children in homeless families will have a mental disorder, such as depression or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, by age 8, said Bassuk.

Their physical health also suffers, with half having asthma, and they suffer three times as many gastrointestinal disorders as children in homes, according to Homes for the Homeless.

In school they are twice as likely to repeat a grade.

Renee Brown, 37, said her daughter Bobbie's teacher noticed right away that something was wrong. A doctor diagnosed depression, and Brown put Bobbie, now 9, and her brother, Noah, 6, in counseling.

Brown, who has five children, said she was a housewife when her husband was arrested on a theft-by-deception charge in November 2005. She discovered bills had not been paid. The family's cars were repossessed and they were evicted, moving in with Brown's mother-in-law.

After the eviction, Noah began to act more aggressively, but it was Bobbie who took the loss the hardest, Brown said. "She wasn't smiling. She started eating quite a lot. She gained probably 30 pounds."

Today, Brown's oldest child is grown, and two children live mostly with their father. She is separated from her current husband, who will be sentenced tomorrow, according to court records.

While Brown said she had let her kids down, things are looking up, thanks to a program that helped her find a home.

Family & Children First's Homeless Prevention Service has linked Brown with a program that got her into a house.

She must pay 30 percent of her income toward rent and utilities. The balance is taken care of by the Louisville Metro Housing and Community Development Department Tenant Based Rental Assistance Program, which will refer her to subsidized housing after 18 months.

Brown has also found a job cleaning doctors' offices, and she is determined to stay in the three-bedroom rental house on Lucille Avenue. Her children already have turned the backyard shed into a clubhouse and adopted a 3-year-old dog.

But staying isn't going to be easy. She is covering the cost of utilities but hasn't had to pay her share of the rent yet. "It's not perfect right now ....." said Brown. "But, you know, it will work out -- I hope."

Reporter Katya Cengel can be reached at (502) 582-4224.

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