A recent report the Department of Housing and Urban Development prepared for Congress confirms what so many of us see or experience in our communities: The number of people without homes has reached record levels. According to that report, the 2023 “Point-in-Time (PIT) count” showed the highest number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night since reporting began in 2007. Since last year, the number of people experiencing homelessness increased by 12%. A full 40% of people experiencing homelessness were unsheltered, living “in places not meant for human habitation.”
A full 40% of people experiencing homelessness were unsheltered, living “in places not meant for human habitation.”
That’s the bad news. The good news? As we’ve already seen before, with action from Congress, the administration and state and local communities, homelessness is solvable and preventable. During the pandemic, lawmakers at the federal, state and local levels prevented an eviction tsunami by providing unprecedented resources and protections to get and keep people housed. The measures included $46.6 billion in emergency rental assistance, a national moratorium on evictions for nonpayment of rent, emergency housing vouchers and other resources to move people experiencing homelessness to safety.
The worst of Covid may be behind us, but the nation’s housing and homelessness crisis remains severe. Congress must now act with the same resolve it found during the worst of Covid to support the lowest-income renters and people without homes.
Homelessness is a policy choice. It’s the consequence of a longstanding failure by the U.S. to prioritize the housing needs of its lowest-income residents. The main reason people become homeless is simple: They lack access to affordable homes. Nationally, there are fewer than 4 homes affordable and available for every 10 of the lowest-income people. The shortage of homes for extremely low-income renters is a structural feature of the country’s housing system. It’s persistent and pervasive.
This shortage has worsened as housing costs continue to outrun income gains. In the 20 years from 2001 to 2021, real household incomes increased only 3.2%, while rents increased by nearly 18%. Today, half of the nation’s 20 most common occupations, which account for more than 49 million workers, pay median wages that are less than what a full-time worker needs to earn to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment.
Systemic racism, past and present, has led to significant racial disparities in housing and homelessness. People of color are more likely to rent their homes and are more likely to face cost burdens, evictions and homelessness. Ongoing injustices and discriminatory practices persist to this day, putting millions of households of color at heightened risk of housing instability or homelessness. While Black households make up just 13% of the total U.S. population and 21% of the U.S. population living in poverty, HUD reports that they are 37% of all people experiencing homelessness and half of people experiencing homelessness as families with children. Latino households had the largest numerical increase in homelessness, and Asian Americans had the greatest percentage increase.
Without affordable housing options, most people with the lowest incomes pay at least half of it on rent, a predicament that forces them to make impossible choices, such as buying food and medicine or keeping roofs over their heads. In such precarious conditions, an unexpected financial shock can lead to eviction and, in the worst cases, homelessness.
Despite the clear and urgent need, Congress provides housing assistance to only 1 in 5 eligible households.
Despite the clear and urgent need, Congress provides housing assistance to only 1 in 5 eligible households, and, even as the need grows, the number of households receiving assistance has steadily declined. A recent New York Times analysis shows that housing assistance has dropped by 6% since 2004, while, over the same period, the number of eligible households without assistance has grown by 25%.
But there’s reason for optimism. The resources and protections that Congress funded and passed when Covid numbers were at their highest were tremendously successful. Those actions from Congress cut evictions in half, reduced eviction filings to the lowest rate on record, ensured housing for tens of thousands of people experiencing homelessness and kept millions of renters who otherwise would have lost their homes stably housed. Moreover, many of these measures drew bipartisan support, demonstrating that members of Congress can find common ground when it comes to helping low-income renters and those experiencing homelessness find stable housing.
But as essential as the pandemic measures were, they were only a temporary patch for the gaping holes in our social safety net. The emergency resources and protections did little to correct the deep structural flaws in our country’s housing system that leave so many of the lowest-income people struggling perpetually to keep roofs over their heads. And longer-term housing solutions included in the Build Back Better Act, which the House passed, were blocked from passage in the Senate by all Republicans and two Democrats.
Just as pandemic protections expired and emergency resources were depleted, renters re-entered a brutal housing market, where they were faced with skyrocketing rents and soaring inflation. As rents increased, so did homelessness.
The Government Accountability Office has found that a $100-per-month median increase in rent is associated with a 9% increase in homelessness in a given community. From 2021 to 2022, renters saw the monthly cost of rent rise by a median of $200. Though rents have stabilized, the median rent of new leases last month was 22% higher than it was at the beginning of 2021. Historically, low-cost rental homes experience even higher rent inflation than others.
Longer-term housing solutions included in the Build Back Better Act were blocked in the Senate by all Republicans and two Democrats.
No wonder, then, that homelessness, a lagging indicator of housing affordability, reached its highest-ever recorded rate this year. As the affordability crisis for renters intensified, more and more people were pushed into homelessness. While communities have become even more effective at helping people exit homelessness by using the Housing First approach, homeless systems cannot keep up with increased inflow. In many communities, for every person who is successfully moved from homelessness into housing, more than one other becomes newly homeless.
To end homelessness, Congress must increase investments in proven, long-term solutions to address its underlying causes: the persistent shortage of homes affordable to people with the lowest incomes and the gap between incomes and housing costs. Congress should make rental assistance available to all eligible households in need, preserve and expand the supply of homes affordable to the lowest-income people and maintain those pandemic programs that prevented evictions and homelessness.
Congress should also enact and enforce robust renter protections to correct a power imbalance that tilts heavily in favor of landlords at the expense of renters.
Homelessness is our country’s most urgent, tragic and solvable crisis and one that demands immediate action. The price of inaction is steep, affecting people from every walk of life, of every political stripe, in every community. During the pandemic, Congress found the will to confront a housing crisis decisively. Now, Congress must follow its own example by acting without delay to ensure housing security for the lowest-income renters and end homelessness in the U.S. once and for all.