Despite a strong national economy, homelessness is a growing problem throughout many parts of the United States and the Miss-Lou is no exception.

For whatever reason, a certain percentage of the population, whether in metropolitan areas or rural areas, have found themselves on hard times.

Homeless camps are prevalent in big cities, with tents set up under bypasses and on other public grounds.

In some areas homeless people sleep in their cars.

In many rural areas of the nation, homeless people set up camps in wooded areas hidden from the general public behind tree rows and such is the case in the Miss-Lou.

Most of the time, the Miss-Lou homeless population is out of sight and out of mind and your average resident doesn’t even notice them.

Once in a while, however, they become visible.

Such was the case when a homeless man broke plate glass windows on the sheriff’s office Dec. 19 in order to get arrested and put in the warm jail.

The incident gained wide attention and illustrated the need for a shelter in the Miss-Lou, as Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten said.

A need does exist for some sort of shelter in the Miss-Lou and plans are in the works for a couple of shelters by non-profit organizations and one of those is meeting opposition from neighbors. No one would blame residents for being concerned by the prospect of having such a shelter in their neighborhood, especially a long-term facility, which no one is proposing.

The city and county had formed a committee last year to study the possibilities but the committee fell by the wayside.

We believe it is time to bring the committee back together to come up with a compromise to help people in need on cold winter nights.

Surely some sort of solution can be found to keep something like the incident of Dec. 19 or worse from happening again.