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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- State officials say Utah's homeless population has increased by 8 percent, to 15,525. Most were easy to count: All but about 510 were in shelters when the tally was taken in late January.
Lloyd Pendleton, the state's Homeless Task Force director, says those people were typically living outdoors in the cold, in tents or in their cars.
Of Utah's total homeless population, 1,400 have been homeless for a year or more.
That figure of the chronically homeless declined by 5 percent. Pendleton credited the opening of affordable housing units in Salt Lake County for the decrease.
The federal government requires Utah and other states to count homeless people every January.
Pendleton says police and sheriff's deputies across Utah canvassed parks, camps and other places to estimate how many homeless people were outside shelters.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
