Homelessness has not spiked
What Could Go Right? is a free weekly newsletter from?The Progress Network ?written by our executive director,?Emma Varvaloucas . In addition to this newsletter, which collects substantive progress news from around the world, The Progress Network is also home to the anti-apocalypse conversational podcast also called?What Could Go Right? .
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Editor’s note: It is now preferred by those working in the field of homelessness to refer to people as “unhoused” or “experiencing homelessness.” I don’t always follow this prescription in the article below, as it can make for convoluted writing, and many aren’t familiar with the updated terms . If you are, their non-use here is not meant as an expression of disrespect or dehumanization.
I lived in New York from the late aughts until the pandemic, so I’m no stranger to city living. Home for the holidays, however, I have been shocked not only by the number of homeless people here but also by their physical and mental condition. It is strikingly worse than what I remember.
Given the nature of The Progress Network, I am always skeptical of what the media calls a “crisis.” The word is thrown around entirely too much. I am skeptical, too, of anecdotal evidence . But since so much has been written about the United States’ homelessness crisis, since the rent is definitely too damn high , and since real-world experience is hard to ignore, I assumed this was an instance where “crisis” fits the bill.?
So I was surprised again, this time by the numbers, when I went looking for them. Data for 2023 aren’t out yet, and comprehensive data do not exist for 2021 due to the pandemic. But in 2022, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s annual report on homelessness , the homelessness rate remained steady at .18 percent of the American population. Homelessness has increased since 2016, but decreased since 2007 by over 64,000 people.
What has increased a lot in recent years are the numbers of the chronically homeless, which HUD defines as individuals with disabilities experiencing homelessness for long periods of time. Almost 22,000 more people since 2010 are now chronically homeless. (2010 is used as a comparison point as it is the first year that the federal government set a national goal to end homelessness.)
The report didn’t offer a specific explanation why, although they did make note of the rental market, as well as government funding and the federal eviction moratorium potentially buffering housing insecurity caused by the pandemic.?
What’s curious is that the rise in the chronically homeless isn’t tied to a shrinking ability to give shelter and support. Since 2007, the US has almost quadrupled the number of beds available in what is called permanent supportive housing , long-term rentals where rental assistance is provided along with services like childcare, job and skills training, and substance abuse and mental health counseling. Almost half of the about 178,000 spots are dedicated to those experiencing chronic homelessness.
There are other improvements. Fewer families are homeless, down 36 percent since 2010, comprising almost 30,000 families. Among homeless families, fewer are unsheltered, meaning that they are sleeping on the street or in abandoned buildings. That heartbreaking situation is down by almost 66?percent since 2010.
As we spoke about on the podcast recently , the number of homeless veterans has been cut by over half since 2010, with over 40,000 of them now housed. That was a particular focus of the Obama administration.
Youth homelessness is also down in recent years, although we can’t compare data from before 2017.
How anecdotal experience interacts with the federal statistics will vary for American readers depending on where they live. I wasn’t off in my assessment that homelessness in New York City has worsened , even if rates in the state are among the nation’s lowest. In terms of absolute numbers, more than half of the US’ homeless live in California, New York, Florida, and Washington. An astonishing half of all unsheltered people—those sleeping outside—live in California.
I had also assumed that the US has a homeless rate that far surpasses Europe’s. Again, it’s not that simple. A 2023 report from the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless (FEANTSA) put the minimum number of homeless people in Europe at 895,000, although they say the data is patchy. If the number is right enough, back-of-the-napkin math puts Europe’s rate at roughly .12 percent.
That varies widely by country. France, Germany, and Ireland all have rates higher than the US; France’s is over .3 percent. Then there’s Finland, a country of 5.5 million people, with around 3,700?homeless people total, which they brought down from around 17,000 in the 1980s.?How did Finland do it? They built and converted housing specifically for homeless people, and use?the Housing First approach —housing is provided before any other services, and without preconditions.?Both the Obama and Biden administrations use(d) it, too .
Overall, FEANTSA expects homelessness in Europe to worsen due to energy costs, rent increases, and the influx of Ukrainian refugees that has put pressure on existing shelter systems. A commitment to end homelessness by 2030, signed in 2021, is the first time, the report says, that the bloc has shown “genuine political commitment” to assessing and solving the issue.
As for the US, the Biden administration’s 2022 goal was to cut homelessness by a quarter by 2025. As this Bloomberg article explains, much of that execution falls to local leaders. Recently, the media has singled out San Antonio , Reno , and Houston as success stories, and I would love to hear from any readers who have heard about others.
That homeless numbers are not spiking overall in the US does not necessarily mean that it’s unfair to label homelessness as a crisis. The modern era of homelessness is considered to have begun in the 80s—an accounting of the history is here —when numbers first hit the 500–600,000 range we are in now. (With a smaller overall population, roughly a rate of .22–.26.)?
Perhaps we are still in crisis conditions, especially if we take Finland as our paragon of success! And for any one individual experiencing homelessness, no one would argue, of course, that it isn’t a personal crisis. But I continue to find that the reality of statistics is often at odds with narratives I’ve constructed in my head.
We will take another look at this when the 2023 figures are released.
—Emma Varvaloucas
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11 个月Important insights, Zachary Karabell! How do you see these trends affecting our global progress and sustainability efforts in the coming years?