Every year, typically at the end of January, teams of canvassers conduct a vital survey to count the number of people experiencing homelessness in America.<\/p>\n
This survey informs the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)\u2019s Annual Homelessness Assessment Report<\/a> to Congress. It includes Point-in-Time (PIT) estimates of the number of people who, on a single night, are staying in emergency shelters, transitional housing, safe havens<\/a>, or unsheltered locations across the country.<\/p>\n In 2024, those PIT estimates<\/a> were the highest ever recorded, with a total of 771,840 people across the U.S. experiencing homelessness\u2014including nearly 150,000 children.<\/p>\n The numbers are daunting, but experts believe it is possible to end this situation in the U.S.\u2014and a growing body of research shows what it would take to do it.<\/p>\n How We Got Here<\/p>\n Well before the Supreme Court\u2019s 2024 decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson<\/a>, which allows cities to punish unhoused people for sleeping in public even if they have nowhere else to go, the general public was noticing an uptick in homelessness.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople\u2019s intuition is right: More people are experiencing homelessness, and more people are in need of services than ever before,\u201d says MPH student and Bloomberg Fellow Daniel Soucy<\/a>, a research analyst at the\u00a0National Alliance to End Homelessness<\/a>.<\/p>\n The main reason? Housing costs have increased while wages, especially for low-income workers, have not kept pace<\/a>.<\/p>\n While many people believe that substance use, mental illness, or other individual factors are the main drivers of homelessness, extensive research shows that rising housing costs drive more people into homelessness than any other cause. For example, a 2023 Pew analysis<\/a> of housing costs and homelessness noted that \u201chousing costs explain far more of the difference in rates of homelessness than variables such as substance use disorder, mental health, weather, the strength of the social safety net, poverty, or economic conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n Ashley Meehan<\/a>, MPH, a PhD candidate in Health, Behavior and Society<\/a>, points to a dashboard created by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition<\/a> that shows the hourly wage required to afford a two-bedroom apartment in each state. There is no state in the country where a person working full-time at the federal minimum wage can afford such a unit. In South Dakota, which has the country\u2019s lowest housing costs, a person would need to work 66 hours per week at minimum wage to afford to rent a modest apartment.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are 17 states where you need to make at least $30 an hour or more just to afford an average two-bedroom rental unit,\u201d Meehan says. \u201cThere\u2019s this increasing gap between what things cost and what people are making.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that homelessness is a housing problem,\u201d Soucy says. \u201cThe Government Accountability Office has shown that when median rents increase in a community, homelessness also increases in that community.\u201d<\/p>\n Housing First<\/p>\n It sounds almost too obvious: To end homelessness, house people. Housing First<\/a> is one approach to this, and evidence shows it\u2019s effective<\/a>.<\/p>\n Housing First solves the immediate and foundational need of giving people a safe, permanent place to live with no preconditions. Once that basic need is met, people can opt to use supportive services that meet other needs, such as access to health care, employment assistance, or programs to treat substance use disorders.<\/p>\n The idea of Housing First originated in the U.S. in the 1990s and was adopted as federal policy in the 2000s during the George W. Bush administration. Though the policy was never scaled up sufficiently, it was the basis of a successful partnership between HUD and Veterans Affairs that dramatically reduced homelessness among U.S. veterans.<\/p>\n From 2000 to 2017, the U.S. doubled federal funding to programs targeting homelessness among veterans, including voucher programs and others designed specifically to provide housing. In that same period, veteran homelessness decreased by 47%<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI think about that all the time,\u201d says Meehan. \u201cAnytime anyone says, [ending homelessness] can\u2019t be done, I\u2019m like, well, it\u2019s already working for some people, if you\u2019re committed to actually doing it, and doing it right, and sustaining that response. \u2026 I think if we\u2019re willing to scale that up, that could happen for so many more people.\u201d<\/p>\n Housing First is both effective and cost-effective.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen someone experiences homelessness, they cost a lot more to emergency systems, criminal legal systems, shelter, etc., than someone who is housed,\u201d Soucy explains. \u201cAdditionally, they are so focused on staying alive they can\u2019t fully contribute to local economies.\u201d<\/p>\n Meehan cites a mortality report of unhoused people from Austin, Texas<\/a>. In the year before they died in the hospital, the people experiencing homelessness incurred, in medical costs alone, expenses totaling 81% of what it would have cost to provide them Permanent Supportive Housing. \u201cWe\u2019re paying way more in all of these other places than what it would cost just to provide housing,\u201d Meehan says.<\/p>\n The NAEH estimates<\/a> that it would cost $9.6 billion\u2014nearly triple what the U.S. spends now on programs to end homelessness\u2014to provide permanent housing for every household who stayed in an emergency shelter in 2022.<\/p>\n And where will that affordable housing come from? A 2025 paper in Housing Policy Debate<\/a> suggests options ranging from policies that incentivize producing high-quality one-room units for people with very low incomes, to increasing housing stock \u201cthat sits outside the private market.\u201d This might come from increased investments in public housing, \u201cthe acquisition of housing by public housing authorities or other non-profit entities,\u201d or other models.<\/p>\n Preventing Homelessness<\/p>\n An even more cost-effective approach to homelessness is to prevent it from happening.<\/p>\n \u201cI see housing as a spectrum of stably housed at one end to experiencing homelessness at the other end,\u201d Meehan says. \u201cAnd in between there, there’s this ambiguous, amorphous category of housing unstable or housing insecure.\u201d Addressing any transition along that spectrum is \u201chomelessness prevention,\u201d she says. \u201cTo prevent homelessness is to stop the housing loss as early as you can.\u201d<\/p>\n Housing supports can correspond to people\u2019s needs across that spectrum. Many people need only immediate, temporary support, such as help paying for utilities, rental assistance<\/a>, or having a case manager for finding employment and a unit on the private market.<\/p>\n \u201cIntervening before somebody experiences homelessness by paying for their rent or covering whatever cost they need to stay housed or connecting them with some sort of health care service, if that\u2019s what they need, is cheaper than it is to address homelessness once it occurs,\u201d Soucy says. \u201cIt’s also just a lot easier if you know where someone\u2019s living to provide them with services and stay in contact with them. So that is always the ideal scenario\u2014that we’re going to do what we need to do to keep people housed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Providing support at critical junctures\u2014such as discharge from foster care, mental health or substance use programs, or the criminal justice system\u2014could also go a long way toward preventing homelessness. In 2022, people leaving those settings made up 29% of shelter entrants<\/a> who were not already homeless.<\/p>\n What Doesn\u2019t Work<\/p>\n Research has consistently shown<\/a> that one increasingly common response is not just ineffective but actively harmful: criminalizing homelessness.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTicketing, fining, and putting people in jail, even for short periods of time\u201d only worsens the situation for people experiencing homelessness, Soucy says. \u201cThey lose their belongings. They might lose their ID. I talked to physicians who administer medicine to people experiencing homelessness, and they say, \u2018I have to write a new prescription every single time that somebody gets pushed off the street or gets their tent taken away.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Criminalizing homelessness can also perpetuate the problem. \u201cIf you have a criminal record, that precludes you from a lot of housing options,\u201d Meehan says. \u201cIt also makes it harder to get a job. It exacerbates the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n She notes that several cities across the country have implemented alternatives to policing that use community response teams to connect people to services.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe one I\u2019m most familiar with is PAD [Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative<\/a>] in Atlanta. It\u2019s embedded into the city’s 311 hotline, so you can call 311 and say, \u2018I see someone in this location, and it seems like they’re having a crisis right now,\u2019 and they\u2019ll send folks out there who can help engage with that person in a trauma-informed way to help get them engaged with the services that they might want or need,\u201d Meehan says.<\/p>\n The community can see that there is a response; the person in crisis gets connected with supports and kept out of the criminal justice system; and police can respond to more appropriate calls. \u201cI think that\u2019s a win for lots of different people who have a stake in the community,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n When it comes to closing encampments, Atlanta also provides an example<\/a> of how planned, coordinated, and humane initiatives can help people without criminalizing them. Atlanta\u2019s Continuum of Care<\/a>\u2014a partnership of nonprofit, government, and other community organizations dedicated to ending homelessness\u2014housed 1,850 households through strategic efforts that provided access to housing and services for residents of two encampments.<\/p>\n Moving Forward<\/p>\n For Soucy and the homeless service providers they regularly connect with, ending homelessness is not just a vision but an achievable goal.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople who work in those roles [in homelessness response and services] feel the challenges every single day. They\u2019re often not paid enough, they\u2019re often overworked and often burdened with trauma. But in speaking to them, they never doubt that we can end homelessness,\u201d Soucy says. \u201cIt’s extremely clear to me and to everybody who does this work that we know how to end homelessness. That gives me a lot of hope and gives me a lot of things to look forward to in the future, even if right now it feels quite difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n Meehan, too, knows it\u2019s possible to end homelessness, especially if we approach the issue with humanity.<\/p>\n \u201cI would love for everyone to see their unhoused neighbors truly as their neighbors. \u2026 Seeing each other as one collective community would be huge. I think that that would change the way people voted and the types of policies that get put forward. And I think that that would change how people interact with one another, and the decisions of like, do I call 911, or do I call 311? Do I want to help this person or just get them taken away?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every year, typically at the end of January, teams of canvassers conduct a vital survey to count the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":140907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[210,1141,10667,1142,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-140906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-health-policy","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115018412957317737","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}