The Homeless – The People We Do Not See
This piece sets the stage for Monday’s article on ROUGH SLEEPERS, the horrific yet heroic account of the millions of Americans eking out a marginal existence on the streets and in the alleys.
America ranks second among developed countries for numbers of homeless people. And more people are homeless in America today than ever before: more than 650,000 – a growth of 12% over last year alone. Four in ten of those people sleep outside.
I apologize in advance for the coming flow of statistics; statistics are a poor way to tell the story, yet they are unavoidable. I hope that the numbers, however, do not depersonalize a very human catastrophe involving people who may be our relatives, friends or close family. Their disaster is occurring in slow motion in most communities across our country.
Homelessness is a condition brought on by a blend of causes: inadequate social nets, soaring prices in real estate, poverty rates, and drug use. It is a story that cannot be told without reference to those causes…but it is a unique narrative that needs its own spotlight.
Lack of affordable housing is the primary cause, paralleled with a limited number of housing assistance programs. Increasing poverty completes the picture.
In 2021 the number of people living in poverty had risen to 41.4-million people, or almost 13% of the population. At that time, an estimated 7.1 million American households experienced severe housing cost burden, which means that they spent more than 50 percent of their income on housing.
“Doubling up”, or sharing the housing of others, also increased, with another 3.7-million people experiencing this need.
For over a decade, the nation has not made any real progress in reducing the number of Americans who are in the level of poverty that puts them at risk of becoming homeless.
Soaring rents and property cartels are behind the masses of poor people driven into the streets. An influx of immigrants is not the reason for the lack of housing. Since the beginning of the pandemic, rental prices have jumped by 30%. Housing assistance has reached the lowest point in 25 years. The federal government is working on solutions to the economic problem, while cities are struggling with the immediate issue of where to put people; the constitutionality of camping bans is dividing citizens.
Largely because of external factors like this – as opposed to some kind of personal weakness or flaw in an individual - there is a move to change the terminology. Instead of the word “homeless”, which is seen to be dehumanizing, some are embracing the word “unhoused”. This is rising in use on the West Coast, which tends to set the pace on social programs.
The main cause of homelessness, says an expert:
Mark Hovath interviews people on why they became homeless; he is a reporter who himself spent eight years as a homeless person.
From Jeremy Ney “American Inequality”
The housing market is more sensitive to interest rates and overall top-down liquidity than it is to a person’s ability to pay. That means that price responds to a set of conditions that are disconnected from how we experience things.
Private equity firms purchased 44% of all single family homes that were for sale last year. In 2021 corporations bought 28% of all the homes sold in Texas, 19% of all the homes sold in Georgia, and 16% of all the homes sold in Florida.
They buy the housing with money they loan themselves from their banks, confident that renters will pay them back. They do not in fact “buy” the house at all, but rather make a deal for the renter to make their payments. The process devalues consumers’ spending, and reduces the chances that they will ever be able to afford a home of their own. The ownership class continues to gain while the aspiring class loses ground.
Because the purchase of a home has been disconnected from the economy, we have some 15.1 million vacant homes in America. This staggering number represents more than 10% of the country’s housing inventory.
Some of those units are being converted to low-income use. More than 400 affordable micro apartments are now open in Chicago after a two-year renovation of the former Lawson House YMCA. Rooms are 145-160 square feet with a kitchenette and a bathroom, something the previous apartments did not have. Each unit is furnished with a twin bed, drawers, kitchen table and chairs. All apartments have accessible features, like lower countertop heights and shower seats.
The high price of rent is leading to other innovative living solutions. Cut-price motels have become way stations for broken people in broken cities. The Housing Authority of the County of San Bernardino, says that motels are increasingly being used to house the homeless, since there’s a lack of resources and permanent housing to deal with the homelessness crisis. “We need something to house families immediately and motels are the quickest way to provide a temporary shelter for a family,” said one director.
At $800/month, the motel is $1,000 cheaper than the average rental price in California.
Rents are under attack, however, by the same corporate forces that buy up the houses.
A company called RealPage created an algorithm that establishes an effective cartel across a region. It is used by 90% of renters in the District of Washington, and it controls 70% of the rental properties in Phoenix. A few lines of computer code are again breaking the housing market. Landlords enter their prices into the algorithm, and it sets the region-wide prices to maximize profit for everyone. Across America, rent prices are up 20% since 2020. Landlords used to compete with one another; now they rely on a computer program to find the highest price and make sure everyone adheres to it. A few renters may drop out of the system, but that too is calculated in the formula and offset. They are not charging what the market can bear; they are controlling the market. It is almost certain that people were evicted as a result of this price-fixing, and that many were made homeless. RealPage coaches the landlords not to say anything about its activities. As a result, there are rental units all over that stand empty, because landlords are waiting to optimize their prices.
Renters are now banding together to sue RealPage and others like it.
The statistics on homelessness under-estimate the problem, because they do not count the many children and young adults who go from place to place, “couch surfing” with friends and relatives. One report found that nearly 1.3 million public school children — 2.5% of all enrolled students — have experienced homelessness. During the pandemic, schools lost track of homeless youths. As schools reopened, they found that the number of students experiencing homelessness had gone up. And when schools themselves closed during the pandemic, homeless students lost the last source of stability in their lives, which added to their feelings of stress and anxiety. Children who have been homeless are less likely to graduate from high school than those who haven’t been homeless, and they’re also more likely to experience homelessness again in their lives.
Support for students experiencing homelessness is limited—and becoming more so. Ongoing federal funding is minimal, restricted in how it can be used, and does not make it to most districts serving homeless students.
Joshua Passamore, for example, an economics major at the University of the Pacific in California, was forced to leave his apartment after a rent increase meant that his job as a food delivery driver could no cover the rent on his shared apartment. Said the 21-year-old: “You’re kind of just stuck in a perpetual hole. It just keeps getting worse and worse. Money grows tighter. Then, increasing credit card debt to survive and having to make a lot of tough decisions at the margin based on survivability.”
The vast majority (72 percent) of homeless people however are individual adults, but a notable share (28 percent) were people living in families with children.
22 percent are chronically homeless individuals (or people with disabilities who have experienced long-term or repeated incidents of homelessness).
6 percent are veterans (distinguished due to their service to the country).
5 percent are unaccompanied youth under 25 (considered vulnerable due to their age).
Race and ethnicity are key determinants that impact who will become homeless and the type and depth of rehousing barriers people will experience.
White people are numerically the largest racial group, representing half of all people experiencing homelessness. Most groups of color have higher rates of homelessness than their White counterparts—and, in some cases, far higher. Within the White group, 11 out of every 10,000 people experience homelessness. For Black people, that number is more than four times as large—48 out of every 10,000 people.
Men (68%) far outnumber women, indicating that there are holes in the social safety net for men.
The homeless services system provides shelter for some 350,000 people on any given night. About 40 percent of people experiencing homelessness live ‘unsheltered’, which means their primary nighttime residence is a place not suitable for human habitation (for example, a city sidewalk, vehicle, abandoned building, or park).
Unsheltered homelessness is on the rise, amounting to a 35% increase in the last seven years. This is happening despite the fact that there are more beds than ever in shelters.
Homeless services systems often don’t have the resources to house everyone in need. Thus, they make a host of difficult decisions related to 1) who to help and 2) how to budget available funds among temporary shelter and permanent housing options.
The top two forms of housing assistance are permanent supportive housing (37 percent of system beds) and emergency shelter (32 percent of system beds). The third most popular form of assistance (Rapid Re-Housing) is also the fastest growing: the number of beds in this category has grown by 60 percent over the last five years.
Californians have the highest likelihood of being unhoused, however—44 out of every 10,000 residents. Humboldt County, California reports the highest per capita experiences of homelessness (121 out of every 10,000 people).
Now, a case from California is in front of the Supreme Court for decision. The Supreme Court is considering whether banning homeless people from sleeping outside when shelter space is lacking amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. In California and other Western states, courts have ruled that it's unconstitutional to fine and arrest people sleeping in homeless encampments if shelter space is lacking. The case comes from the rural Oregon town of Grants Pass, which started fining people $295 for sleeping outside in order to rein in homeless encampments that sprung up in the city's public parks as the cost of housing escalated. Justice Sonia Sotomayor seems to be leaning towards the homeless: “Where do we put them if every city, every village, every town lacks compassion and passes a law identical to this? Where are they supposed to sleep? Are they supposed to kill themselves, not sleeping?"
Advocacy groups argue that allowing cities to punish people who need a place to sleep will criminalize homelessness and ultimately make the crisis worse as the cost of housing increases.
The Court is expected to rule on the case by the end of June.
Oliver Wiseman reported on a city council meeting in West Hollywood (California has been dubbed “the capital for homelessness”) where residents objected to a new housing unit that would be required to set aside some units for low income earners.
“It was jarring to watch some of my supposedly progressive neighbors attempt to keep poor people out of our community,” one man complained, “citing everything from the potential for traffic to the concern that the building’s 300-square-foot “microunits” would be beneath the dignity of any potential resident. [a potential resident being someone currently living in a tent underneath an overpass]” Meanwhile, low-income workers in attendance tried to explain that it would be nice to live within commuting distance of where they work.
“Nearly to a person, the NIMBYs insisted they were ardent supporters of affordable housing. Just “not at the expense,” he continued, “of the quality of the people living in the neighborhood.”
i.e Themselves. They don’t want to be sharing their neighborhood with actual poor people. Giving to charity is a sanitary check-signing activity, but actually seeing a poor person could upset your whole latte experience.
About one-quarter of all homeless people use drugs, and half have an alcohol dependency. This rises to 80% among homeless youth. 21-40% of homeless youth are sexually abused compared to 1-3% of the general youth population.
The addictions come on because of the homeless condition; they are not the primary cause of homelessness. Once caught in the homelessness trap, they often suffer from psychiatric conditions in response to a harsh lifestyle characterized by feeling threatened by violence, starvation, and a lack of shelter and love.
Homeless individuals suffering difficult mental and emotional conditions may find it convenient to self-medicate with harmful substances as well, strengthening the link between homelessness and substance abuse. The combination of mental disorders and substance abuse is known as dual diagnosis or co-occurring disorders. These make it less likely that they will be able to break out of the homeless trap and get back up again.
Due to their financial situation, they also don’t have access to the level of care needed to address their drug, alcohol, and mental health issues.
As Dr. Jim O’Connell summed up from his four decades of helping the homeless in Boston:
“I like to think of this problem of homelessness as a prism held up to society, and what we see refracted are the weaknesses in our health care system, our public health system, our housing system, but especially in our welfare system, our educational system, and our legal system — and our corrections system. If we’re going to fix this problem, we have to address the weaknesses of all those sectors.”
More on Dr. O’Connell on Monday…
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