So where do they go when a rental voucher is years away at best? Ziegler didn’t have an answer.

“Probably the better person to ask would be at the Salvation Army or Teresa House or the Welcome Inn,” she said, mentioning Mankato’s homeless shelters. “... We hear people are living with friends, couch-jumping, things like that.”

Of one thing Ziegler is fairly certain — there isn’t any emergency funding coming to the rescue. Federal stimulus funds were focused on job-creating areas, so money for low-income housing went to weatherization and energy efficiency programs for public housing that will put workers on the job.

And regular federal funding for rental vouchers has been frozen for about 20 years — at a level that leaves an extensive waiting list even in prosperous economic times, she said.

“There has never been enough federal rental assistance to meet the need,” Ziegler said. “Never.”