Homelessness Ticked Up This Year as Rising Rents Continue To Price People Out
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Homelessness rose this year as rents and home prices spiked across the country.
In January, nearly 582,500 people experienced homelessness, according to a recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report. That figure is a slight increase—about 0.3%—from 2020. However, homelessness fell 10% over the past 15 years.
The homeless counts were performed in late January, February, and early March. The numbers were compared with 2020 because many places didn’t hold full counts during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.
“We’re not keeping up with folks who are becoming homeless,” says Marybeth Shinn, a professor who specializes in homelessness at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. “We’re generating more homelessness more rapidly than we’re housing people because too many people can’t afford housing.”
Indeed, rents have shot up by double digits across the country over the past year. The increase slowed to just 4.7% year over year in October, according to the most recent Realtor.com® data.
Virtually no part of the country is affordable for a minimum-wage, full-time worker to pay for a two-bedroom apartment on wages alone, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
“We’re likely to see a big jump in homelessness as rents have gone up if we don’t do more to make housing affordable,” says Shinn.
About 6 in 10 homeless people in America were sleeping on the street, in encampments, or in abandoned buildings or other unsheltered locations, according to the HUD report. The unsheltered homeless population rose 3.4% since 2020. This could possibly be because many people would rather avoid the shelter system, which some say is more dangerous than taking their chances on the street.
In addition, many of those in need of housing were victims of natural disasters. Hurricane Ida, which hit Southern Louisiana in late April 2021, led to more than 4,000 people still living in the shelter system at the start of this year.
The Biden administration plans to reduce homelessness by 25% by 2025. But that will be tough as pandemic-related stimulus money runs out, rents continue to rise, and homelessness continues to be a problem afflicting people of color at disproportionate rates, says Shinn. Most eviction moratoriums enacted during the pandemic have also expired.
“The Biden-Harris Administration is working to significantly reduce homelessness across the country and combat the racial and ethnic disparities resulting from systemic racism,” HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge said in a statement.
Homelessness declines for families, veterans, and youth
One bright spot was that homelessness fell for families, veterans, and youth.
About 28% of those without steady homes were families with children. However, that figure fell by about 10,500 individuals since 2020, according to the report.
Homelessness among veterans also dropped about 11% from 2020 to 2022. There were more than 33,000 homeless veterans this year.
Homelessness for young people (defined as those under the age of 25) fell 12% over the past two years. But nearly 30,000 unaccompanied youth didn’t have a place to go. This included about 2,800 children under the age of 18 without a parent or guardian.
People of color were more likely to be homeless. About 37% of those without a home of their own were Black, despite Black individuals making up just 12% of the nation’s total population. About 24.1% were Hispanic, 3.14% were Native American, and 1.6% were Asian.
Meanwhile, white Americans, who make up the majority of the national population, made up about 50% of the homeless. (The totals do not add up to 100% due to incomplete data reporting.)
“Homelessness is basically the worst manifestation of income inequality and racial discrimination in our country,” says Shinn.
Mental illness is another factor, compounded by the fact that most of those receiving disability can’t find apartments within their budgets.
Where homelessness is the highest
More than half of all homeless people were from just four states: California, New York, Florida, and Washington. However, it’s important to note that all of these states, except Washington, were among the five most populated in the nation. They also had some of the highest real estate prices in the country.
The largest homeless populations were in Los Angeles; New York City; Seattle; San Jose, CA; and Oakland, CA.
Homelessness was unsurprisingly more of a problem in urban areas. About 54% of the nation’s homeless lived in one of the nation’s 50 largest cities, compared with about 21% in the suburbs and 19% in more rural communities.
“Homelessness is essentially a problem of housing affordability compounded with other issues,” says Shinn. “The rates of homelessness depend on the cost of rent. Where rents are high, homelessness is high. ”
Over the past five years, Delaware has seen the largest increase in homelessness, rising 138.3% since 2017. The state was followed by Vermont, at 126.9%; Louisiana, at 123.1%; Maine, at 93.5%; and Arizona, at 51.5%.
Homelessness fell the most since 2017 in North Dakota, down 44%; Maryland, down 26.2%; Wyoming, down 25.8%; Florida, down 19.4%; and Mississippi, down 18.8%.
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