SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — A Christian nonprofit agency plans to build emergency housing for single men and their children in Sioux City.

The Sioux City Journal reports that the Gospel Mission has been helping single women and their children.

The agency’s executive director, Harold Youtzy Jr., says that in the past 18 months, single men with children have frequented the Gospel Mission. He says those families end up homeless for a “wide variety of reasons.”

The $600,000, U-shaped complex will be built on land east of the Gospel Mission’s main facility.

Construction of four apartment-style units is scheduled to start immediately and be finished in six months. Mr. Youtzy says half of the money needed already has been raised.

In recent years, nonprofit groups that work with homeless populations say they are seeing more single fathers with children seeking shelter. Nonprofit officials report hearing about mothers abandoning their children or being jailed or in a rehab program, and fathers struggling to find work in the sluggish economy or being unable to afford housing for themselves and their children on their small incomes.

Media reports also find that some shelters do not accept single men with children, or will admit a father and child only after ascertaining that the child’s mother is not around.

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