Covid and Homelessness
How to Stop Covid From Exacerbating Homelessness
More people are taking to the streets during Covid, but stimulus funds can lead to a permanent reduction in homelessness.
Marybeth Shinn & Jill Khadduri
During the last ten days of January, outreach workers and volunteers fanned out across the country to count people experiencing homelessness. Over the last four years, pre-Covid, the number of people staying in shelters and transitional housing programs has shrunk while the number who lack even this minimal shelter has grown. Covid has accelerated both trends as shelters reduce capacity to keep residents socially distanced, people experiencing homelessness try to avoid Covid hotspots by staying outside, and many congregations that once provided winter shelter programs are forced to close their doors. Even before Covid, over half a million Americans were homeless on a single night in January; nearly a million and a half stayed in a shelter over the course of a year.
We do not know what the late January count of homeless people will show, as many communities avoided the health dangers of sending volunteers to conduct a “street count” this year. We do know that the longer-term effects of the job loss during the pandemic will lead to an upsurge in homelessness in the next two or three years unless Congress takes decisive action to increase long-term housing stability. The people most vulnerable to losing jobs during the Covid pandemic have been low-wage workers in the retail and service industries, heavily in communities of color. Already in fragile economic circumstances, they have little or no savings. Their relatives and friends often have low incomes, no accumulated wealth, and little ability to send them a check when a crisis hits or take them in for extended periods. To confront this crisis, Congress should provide both additional short-term funds to get people into housing and longer-term assistance to keep them there.
Research shows us what to do. Housing vouchers that hold housing costs to 30% of income prevent homelessness or keep families already in shelter to a single episode. A large, multi-site experiment showed that housing vouchers provided to families experiencing homelessness increased food security, reduced domestic violence, reduced children’s school absenteeism and behavior problems, and had other benefits that radiate beyond stable housing.
Housing vouchers also can also help people whose housing stability is compromised by serious mental illnesses and substance abuse problems. A voucher paired with wrap-around voluntary services, sometimes called supportive housing, succeeds in keeping people housed.
Covid and the current eviction moratorium also provide an opportunity. Stimulus funds can be used not just to expand shelters but to move people from the streets into housing. Housing Choice Vouchers can help them keep it and prevent others from falling into homelessness. If we hope to avoid an upsurge in homelessness Congress should fully fund the additional rental assistance proposed by President Biden. To begin to reduce our numbers of homeless Americans, Congress must go further to expand the Housing Choice Voucher program until every low-income American is eligible.
Homelessness is caused by the gap between the cost of housing and what poor people can afford to pay. Other countries have reduced and even ended homelessness by giving everyone access to affordable housing. The United States has the resources to do so, but up to now we have not made housing our most vulnerable people a national priority. Homelessness is a choice — not one made by people staying on the streets, but one we make as a nation when we turn the other way.
Marybeth Shinn, a Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor at Vanderbilt University, co-led the multi-site Family Options study of interventions to end family homelessness. Jill Khadduri, a principal associate and senior fellow at Abt Associates, co-leads the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress. Together they wrote In the Midst of Plenty: Homelessness and What to Do About It. Wiley, 2020.
