(Radio Iowa) – Requests for emergency housing and first-time homeless claims are up from last year across Waterloo, Cedar Falls and much of Black Hawk County. Grace Fee is the social ministries director for the area’s Salvation Army chapter, one of the groups that helps the homeless. Fee says more help means more denials and her agency’s shelters are already crowded.

Many Iowa communities are working to deal with a lack of affordable housing, and Fee says Black Hawk County is also struggling with the issue.

Over the past two months, the Salvation Army has sheltered about 150 individuals, and more than 30 of them were children.