It’s summer, when most kids haven’t a care in the world except, perhaps, if they’ll be selected as starting pitcher or if the clouds will clear enough for the neighborhood pool to open.

But there are children in Indianapolis for whom summer provides little respite from nagging worries that no child should have to experience. They are homeless, living in shelters, transitional housing or a friend’s basement or even on the street.

The Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention recently released its 2009 count of people experiencing homelessness, taken last Jan. 29. The count — an inexact science but the best and only way we have to quantify the depth of homelessness in our community — found 1,454 individuals in emergency shelters or transitional housing or on the streets. (Under federal rules, those “doubled up” with a friend or relative aren’t included in this count.) Of those, 605, including 359 children, were members of a homeless family.

Perhaps more telling was the count on the same day of children in Marion County schools who qualify for services for the homeless. Even with one township not reporting, 2,932 youngsters were receiving such services that day.

Shocking, yes. Surprising? No. As the economic crisis takes a very real human toll, as parents lose their jobs and families are evicted or foreclosed upon, the face of homelessness in Indianapolis has changed.

We used to conjure images of desperate men, sleeping on park benches or huddling over a steam grate on the city’s coldest nights, when we heard the word “homeless.” Now we sadly but correctly can envision an unemployed mother and her small children who must scramble to an emergency shelter to find a soft bed.

This is occurring across the country. In its 2008 Status Report on Hunger&Homelessness, the U.S. Conference of Mayors said that 16 of the 25 cities that it studied experienced an increase in family homelessness in the year that spanned Oct. 1, 2007, through Sept. 30, 2008. Most attributed the increase to high unemployment, lack of affordable housing and poverty.

Although Indianapolis was not one of those studied cities, our annual count found 213 families who were homeless, up from 120 in 2008, a 78 percent increase. Providers throughout the community report that they’ve seen a dramatic jump in the number of families who are seeking shelter.

We cannot stand by and watch it happen. Our community has programs that offer free or low-price meals during the summer for children who get meals at school during the school year, but Indianapolis has only five shelters that serve families. Only two of them accept men.

Clearly, our community cannot merely manage homelessness by offering piecemeal programs. We must make an investment to end it.

This investment requires more affordable housing and more services to support previously homeless families who move into housing while they get back on their feet.

With the recent infusion of federal money to Indianapolis for neighborhood stabilization and rapid “re-housing,” city and state leaders are well-positioned to make this investment and fulfill the city’s 10-year Blueprint to End Homelessness. Given our economic condition, for a rapidly growing number of families and children, it will come just in the nick of time.