A homeless man walks in front of a painting of US actor James Cagney on a closed souvenirs shop on Hollywood Boulevard. On any given night 754,000 people across the United States are homeless, according to a new government study on the problem released Wednesday. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, in its first study of the scope of the national homelessness problem in 23 years, said that its "snapshot" study based on a three-month period in 2005 showed that two-thirds of the homeless population are men, 16 percent are women, 59 percent are ethnic minorities, 41 percent are in the 31-50 age range and 21 percent are children. It also said that nearly one in five of the adult homeless are military veterans . However, Philip Mangano, executive director of the United States Interagency Council of Homelessness, said that the snapshot survey does not represent the full extent of homelessness across the country. "There is a divergence of opinion among researchers about the number of people who are experiencing homelessness in the course of a year," Mangano said. "Some say it might be as high as one percent of the US population (three million people); others say it might be as high as two million."   點擊查看更多雙語新聞 (AFP)

美國政府本周三公布的一項最新調查顯示，全美每天晚上共有75.4萬人無家可歸。 這是美國住房與城市開發部23年來就無家可歸問題開展的首次調查。據介紹，此項于2005年開展的為期三個月的"快速"調查顯示，在無家可歸的人群中，三分之二的人為男性，16%的人為女性，59%是少數民族裔，41%的人年齡在31歲至50歲之間，21%是兒童。 此外，在無家可歸的成年人中，近五分之一的人是退伍軍人。 然而，美國無家可歸問題跨機構協調委員會的執行主任菲利普·曼格諾說，這項快速調查的結果并不能反映出美國無家可歸問題的真實情況。 曼格諾說：“調查人員對全美一年內無家可歸人數的觀點存在分歧。” “有的調查人員說，全年的無家可歸者人數可能相當于美國總人口的1%（300萬人）；另一些調查人員稱，這一數字應該為200萬。” （ 英語點津姍姍編輯）