Homelessness. The word invokes a spectrum of reactions, images, and emotions.
Let’s review some basic facts about homelessness in the United States:
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[Source: The State of Homelessness in the US – 2021]
Quick facts:
| The average life expectancy of a homeless person is just 50 years. |
| 39.8% of homeless persons are African-Americans. |
| 61% of homeless persons are men and boys. |
| Veterans: 40% of men who are homeless are veterans 8% of women who are homeless are veterans |
| 20% of homeless persons are kids. |
| 42% of street children identify as LGBT. |
| New York City has one-fifth of all US sheltered homeless. |
| The homeless problem is on a downward trend. [Unclear if this article accounts for homelessness trends during the COVID pandemic; however, the numbers cited below do seem to bear this out] |
| Permanent housing interventions have grown by 450% in 5 years. |
- Approximately 17 people per 10,000 experience homelessness each day. (HUD Exchange)
Perhaps not the best figure when looking at the bigger picture. However, when you translate these into overall numbers, things begin to look a lot different.
2. The number of homeless in the US is estimated at 552,830. (Whitehouse)
[Compare this to the number of homeless during the Great Recession — see #35 below]
With around half a million individuals living in a state of homelessness, things are not looking great. Still, on the bright side, it is a small percentage compared to the overall US population — which counts over 327.2 million.
3. Percentage-wise: 0.2% of the American population lives in a state of homelessness. (Whitehouse)
While the low percentages don’t make the fact any less serious, in the grand scheme of things, these figures show that the US homeless problem could be managed adequately with some proper structures in place. Though, monitoring the exact number of the homeless population in the US is no easy task. Seeing how there are no fool-proof ways of identifying them, there could be even more of them on the streets.
The Most Common Causes of Homelessness in America
A variety of factors can cause homelessness. However, some common issues can be identified:
27. 38.6% of sheltered homeless individuals are disabled. (National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty)
Disability is one of the most commonly overlooked factors. With almost 4 out of 10 sheltered homeless people being disabled, the US needs to do some serious work on improving its support policies, homelessness statistics from 2018 reveal.
28. Only 30% of affordable housing is available to people with extremely low income (ELI). (National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty)
The promise to provide ELI populations with affordable housing fails to meet expectations. With only 30% of availability, most ELI households are pushed into homelessness with no other way out.
29. 25% of renters have ELI. (National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty)
Why are people homeless? Well, a quarter of the renting population struggle with extremely low income, making them more vulnerable to financial imbalance, where the ratio wages vs house price is disturbed.
30. 25% of homeless people have mental illnesses. (PBS)
Mental illness is one of the most common causes of homelessness, especially among single people. With a whopping quarter of the homeless population struggling with mental health, there is no doubt that mental illness and homelessness are connected.
31. 23% of the US homeless population is chronically homeless. (PBS)
Almost a quarter of homeless individuals are unaccompanied homeless with a disabling condition ranging from substance abuse to disability and mental illness. These people have been continuously homeless for at least a year or have had repeated episodes of homelessness, according to HUD’s definition.
32. Substance abuse and homeless: 38% alcohol abuse & 26% drug abuse. (PBS)
Substance abuse, often driven by stress as a result of another condition, is a common occurrence among the homeless in America. Almost 4 out of 10 have alcohol issues, while a quarter of the homeless experience drug abuse. This highlights the lack of specialist support.
33. 61% rise in homeless since 2008 via foreclosures. (National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty)
This occurs when mortgage payments can’t be met, for any reason. In essence, foreclosures have affected the homeless numbers dramatically.
34. 71% of the homeless live in central cities, homelessness statistics reveal. (PBS)
Urbanization affects the most vulnerable first by increasing the cost of renting and urban life dramatically; meaning, fewer people can make ends meet.
35. There were 1.6 million homeless during the Great Recession. (HUD)
As terrifying as it might sound, the US has not yet hit another recession as devastating as the Great Recession. Nevertheless, there are still lessons to be learned from the past that could help improve the homelessness situation.
36. There’s a downward trend for homelessness in the US. (Our World In Data)
Over the past decade, the homeless situation has been steadily decreasing; there’s been a drop in veteran homelessness, chronic homelessness, and overall family and single homelessness.
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Homelessness by the numbers. It’s good to have data, of course. Data tells us the scale and scope of the problem. It informs policies and budgets. It gives substance to arguments for legislation and community action. Numbers aren’t everything, of course.
Homelessness. What images immediately come to your mind? We’re a long time past the days of Skid Row, bums lined up on a single street in New York (or whatever other city where such men – and they were generally men – found quarter). These days, it’s shabby tents, grocery store carts, RVs and vans stuffed to the brim with bric-a-brac. It’s needles and garbage and smelly clothes. It’s panhandlers and dirt-streaked faces. It’s criminals, petty and otherwise. It’s that old lady talking to herself, cackling to herself as she stumbles down the street, half wearing a sleeping bag and pushing a cart with a broken wheel while dragging a duct-taped suitcase behind her.
It’s also young and old people alike, chanting at rallies, demanding action from their local governments to do something. It’s on-line forums, where people – strangers in the same community – virtually shout at each other, entrenched in their points of view. It’s beleaguered local and state government officials, believing they are doing the best they can, and trying to sell that story to the community.
How do the homeless see it? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them.
Homelessness seems to be on the rise – despite what the article above indicates – due to the COVID pandemic. People are losing their jobs, their homes, their relationships, and even their sanity. Prolonged isolation and diminishing or completely lost earnings. Simultaneously, cities of all sizes are experiencing volatile real estate price increases and while housing capacity diminishes, or can’t keep up with the pace of growth. In part, this trend finds its origins in the number of retiring Baby Boomers, many of whom transition from high-cost urban areas, to smaller, less dense cities where they can pay cash for a house and still retain a hefty sum in their bank accounts, having sold their previous home for 500% or more than what they originally paid.
What did we expect would happen with this confluence of events?
Communities react in all the ways you’d imagine. The protestors and activists, as noted above, shout and sing and scream for action. They attend city council meetings, live or on Zoom. They volunteer at makeshift camps, bringing food, clothing, blankets, or maybe just serve as a receptive ear and a willing heart. The neighbors complain. They admit how terrible the situation is and still plead to make these people go away, these people who litter and spread their junk and needles and excrement everywhere. It’s not safe, the children can’t play, we can’t go for a walk. We need that park for the upcoming summer baseball games!
Everyone turns into Ebenezer Scrooge, before the spirits visit him. There are shelters! These people aren’t using the shelters. They don’t want to abide by the rules. It’s their fault if they don’t take advantage of what our tax dollars are already paying for. They need to get help. They need therapy. They should get jobs. They choose to live that way! They should get out of our neighborhood. Why isn’t the mayor doing something?!
It’s their own fault, really. It’s the drugs. It’s the drink. This is on them. We’re a society of individual responsibility. Why should I pay to let those freeloaders loaf around all day with a needle in their arms? I had a rough childhood, too, but look at me! I made it! They can, too, or they’re just good-for nothing!
Empathy to enragement to entitlement. We run the gamut, don’t we?
Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Is there such a thing?
What are the costs of homelessness? What does it cost to buy tiny homes, and land, or re-purpose hotels, or fund shelters, or provide counseling, or drug treatment?
What are the costs of not reaching out as a community to care for that population that has, somehow, either lost its way or, perhaps, chosen a different way. We still spend money. Just indirectly. On police and fire services. On hospital services. On waste management. On the countless hours of time for public servants and city councils and state governments focusing on how to address the issue. Budgets are proposed, funded by additional taxes on real estate, on AirBnBs, on hotels, on…whatever other sources can be identified to put temporary fixes on the problem. That’s real money, but somehow – if only slightly more – more palatable than directly providing money and services to the homeless in the form of temporary housing intended to provide the platform for permanent housing. On mental health treatment. On drug treatment.
Do we all need houses? What are public spaces for? We make laws to prohibit various kinds of activities in our public spaces. Don’t these people have to abide by those same laws? I’m not getting special treatment; why should they? They’re infringing on my rights in those public spaces. But have we classified not owning or renting a home as a crime? Constitutionally, what are the limits? Where do people go who neither have a home nor, in some cases, want one? What are their rights? What are our responsibilities?
Where do you find yourself in all these statements and hypotheticals? There’s validity across the spectrum. There is crime, there are drugs, there is waste and junk strewn about. If you deny that, you’re blind.
Go back and look at the data. Why are there so many homeless who are veterans? What does that say about us as the people who make up this nation who have increasingly fetishized military might? Why are so many homeless victims of circumstance, suffering a disability that limited or removed their ability to earn an income?
We pit the moral obligation of a community to take care of the least fortunate vs the cultural idealization of individual responsibility. There’s a medium in there, somewhere. Doubtful that it’s a happy one.
What message are we sending future generations about our culture norms? Turn a blind eye? Complain and hope the problem moves on? Become an activist fighting an uphill battle on multiple fronts?
No one wants to drive by the local park and see it populated by obviously homeless people. It causes fear and indignation and resentment and anger…and often pity, helplessness, and despair. In some cases, the fear is recognition that, “there, but for the grace of God, go I.”
0.2% of the population is a small number, at first glance. And mathematically, too. We must choose, then, how we respond to the needs – and rights — of that small number vs the needs and rights of the rest of us. It boils down to the fundamental question of character, culture, and will. Who will we choose to be?
Read, Eat, Ride 