'I don't take anything for granted anymore'
As the US economy has faltered, so the number of homeless people in America has gone up.
Increasingly whole families have found themselves with nowhere to live, along with people who have jobs but who lost their homes in the foreclosure crisis.
Now a shelter in Los Angeles says it is so overwhelmed by the changing nature of homelessness that it has no choice but to ask some residents to pay to stay there.
AJ Goode and his wife Mary lived in their car for months before getting a room at the shelter. AJ has recently found a job and the couple are looking to better times.
31 Aug 2010
- From the section US & Canada