No Homes for the Homeless
Due to the lack of affordable housing across the country more than half a million people experience being homeless every night in the United States. Homelessness is one of the most challenging problems we face as a society. It’s also one of the most solvable.
Over the last couple of decades, rents across America have been on the rise. These cost-burden households are making it hard for families to keep roofs over their heads when their income is also being divided amongst utilities, groceries, medicine, and transportation.
Leading housing advocates report that 11 million households spend more than one-half of their income on rent. A Harvard study reports that 38.1 million households spend more than one-third of their income on housing. Too many families in both categories are an unexpected bill away from sliding into homelessness. When people are spending that much of their income just to pay for the necessity of having somewhere to live, are we really shocked that this many people are homeless?
There are a variety of factors that contribute to homelessness in the United States. This list includes, but is not limited to a lack of affordable housing, low wages, poverty, and unemployment. Although, in recent years the American housing crisis escalated the number of families living without homes in this country.
Invisible People is an organization aimed to help change the story of homelessness by interviewing people who are currently homeless to give context to their situation. I saw a video of Mike who has now lived on the streets of San Francisco for 8 years. He said that years ago he was able to rent a hotel room for $550 a month but now the affordable housing crisis has increased the cost to $1,500 to $2,000 a month which is unattainable for him. Check out his story to hear more about his struggle:
Mike is just one of the many who have fallen victim to this crisis. The lack of affordable housing has led to high-rent burdens, overcrowding, and substandard housing. These phenomena, in turn, have not only forced many people to become homeless; they have put a large and growing number of people at risk of becoming homeless.
The people who are sent to homeless shelters are then placed on excessive waiting lists for public housing which means that they must remain in shelters or inadequate housing arrangements even longer. Longer stays in homeless shelters result in less shelter space available for other homeless people, who must find shelter elsewhere or live on the streets.
We see construction happening around us all the time. It is frequent and ubiquitous, but 80 percent of such projects are exclusive high-rises that often replace older, more affordable housing in the area. Even in areas where housing is readily available, many families cannot afford to live there.
We must preserve and create affordable housing which is really not far fetched. Any community can rewrite local ordinances to reduce barriers to creating housing so that they prioritize building affordable housing, use city owned land for affordable housing development, explore new housing models such as single room occupancy units, smaller housing, or accessory dwellings. While this takes a lot of work from the community — it is more than achievable.
There’s a clear link between a lack of places to live and the number of people sleeping out of doors at night. And the solution is clear, too: Cities need to double down not just on homeless services, but on building more affordable housing, and quickly.
For millions of lower-income Americans, the rent is simply too high. A variety of government programs, including public housing, subsidized housing and rent vouchers, provide affordable homes for roughly five million families. But as many as 18 million more need similar help. Families with small children who spend more than 50 percent of their monthly income on rent must forgo other necessities. On average, they spend 35 percent less on food and 74 percent less on health care than families with the same incomes who are able to find affordable housing.
The first step to solving homelessness is acknowledging that the victims are people. Regular people. Fathers. Mothers. Veterans. Whole families. Folks who fell on hard times and lost their core foundation of being human — their homes.
