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homelessness
Staring Down the Abyss of 2025
The basis of hope for a better future, I believe, is the courage to accept reality. A change of collective consciousness is our best shot at not only surviving but thriving.
Jan 05, 2025
2025 offers an intriguing mix of the certain and the uncertain.
Here’s what is certain: Democratic institutions will continue to crumble, witness the erosion of the rule of law in the U.S. and elsewhere; long-standing norms governing public affairs, such as a bar to prosecuting political opponents, will loosen their grip on behavior; countless species, especially among birds and insects, will go extinct; a host of “unnatural” disasters attributable to climate change, like wild fires and floods, will devastate wondrous landscapes and settled communities; politically or environmentally-induced mass migration, as experienced now in the various parts of the world, will become more pervasive; income inequality between the top 0.01% and the lowest 50% will increase; economic stability, as in the world-wide acceptance of the U.S. Dollar, will wane.
While not a certainty there’s reason to give added credibility to the risks of nuclear warfare, catastrophic climate tipping points, metastatic ethnic cleansing, and a world-wide pandemic, with mass extinction the result.
Within our own narrower, national context, certainties include the highest ever figures for extraction of natural gas and oil, continued increases in chronic diseases such as Type-2 diabetes and cancer, ballooning healthcare costs per capita, upward swings in gun sales and school shootings, dramatically increased levels of homelessness, and more intrusion of microplastics into the oceans and into our bodies.
An unfettered grasp of our situation can offer up considerable light, hope, even optimism; and it can strengthen our resolve and solidify our resilience.
Uncertain are the targets, timing, locales, extent of severity, and designation of victims related to these eminently predicable developments in the world and in our country. Unclear is what will constitute right and effective action in the face of this inevitable political, social, and environmental unravelling. Finally, the grounding for individual and collective action—spiritual moorings, moral anchors, forms of mutual aid—remains inchoate.
To be human is to know we are going to die. This is certain. With each passing day of 2025, my physical being will be undergoing its own forms of unravelling, making death more proximate. What I don’t know is when and under what circumstances it will occur. Nor do I know for sure what my attitude and affect will be should I be conscious at the time.
With increasing disintegration worldwide and the social fabric in this country fraying, what can one do, how should one approach and contend with encroaching forms of “death” in the world and in this country? What are citizens’ essential responsibilities? For me what are mine as a mate, a father, grandfather, and friend?
You, the reader, might conclude, as you absorb all this, “How pessimistic, how fatalistic!” It will likely surprise you that that is not my mind set at all. Rather I am of the mind that the truth indeed sets one free. An unfettered grasp of our situation can offer up considerable light, hope, even optimism; and it can strengthen our resolve and solidify our resilience. Take a hard look at the obverse: that burying unvarnished realities has improved our prospects. Hardly! Denial, obfuscation, euphemism, soft- pedaling, and distraction have not improved things. In fact, a strong case can be made that they have produced exactly the opposite, a deepening of our plight.
So I beckon my fellow citizens to adopt a different strategy, one that willfully accepts our dire circumstances, without wallowing in them, thus offering the chance of achieving more positive outcomes than our current predicament presages. The basis of hope for a better future, I believe, is the courage to accept reality. A change of collective consciousness is our best shot at not only surviving but thriving.
That I will die soon is certain. That 2025 heralds negative trend lines on multiple fronts is certain. But this is where the parallel can end. With a willingness on all our parts to accept our dire lot we can begin to veer away from what now seems a foregone conclusion.
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'A Policy Choice': US Report Finds Homelessness Soared 18% This Year
"Increased homelessness is the tragic, yet predictable, consequence of underinvesting in the resources and protections that help people find and maintain safe, affordable housing," said one advocate.
Dec 27, 2024
The controversial federal system for tracking homelessness in the United States recorded an 18% increase from 2023, breaking the record previously set last year, according to a report released Friday.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) process—which advocates and experts have long argued is flawed and results in inaccurate data that understates the homelessness crisis—provides a snapshot of how many people are unhoused for a single night each January.
This year, the HUD report states, "a total of 771,480 people—or about 23 of every 10,000 people in the United States—experienced homelessness in an emergency shelter, safe haven, transitional housing program, or in unsheltered locations across the country."
"Homelessness among people in families with children, individuals, individuals with chronic patterns of homelessness, people staying in unsheltered locations, people staying in sheltered locations, and unaccompanied youth all reached the highest recorded numbers in 2024," the report notes. "Veterans were the only population to report continued declines in homelessness."
The publication for the agency's 2024 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count adds that "people who identify as Black, African American, or African continue to be overrepresented among the population experiencing homelessness."
In a HUD statement about the document, the outgoing Biden administration highlighted that "this report reflects data collected a year ago and likely does not represent current circumstances, given changed policies and conditions."
Alongside the report, the Biden administration on Friday announced measures to address the crisis, which include "updating regulations that streamline the repurposing of surplus federal properties for affordable housing and homelessness services, making resources available to a select number of states under the second cohort of the Housing and Services Partnership Accelerator with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and awarding approximately $39.8 million to support veterans through the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program."
The data came just weeks away from President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House—and, as Peggy Bailey, an executive vice president at the progressive think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, warned on social media Friday, the incoming Republican administration "is poised to make matters worse."
"Trump's record and Republican proposals raise SERIOUS concerns that the incoming [administration] and Congress will abandon evidence-based approaches and pursue funding cuts and policies that further increase homelessness and deepen inequities," she said, pointing to the president-elect picking former Texas state Rep. Scott Turner (R-33)—who has a history of opposing efforts to help the poor—to run HUD.
While sounding the alarm about the potential impact of Republicans controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress next year, Bailey also called out current policymakers for not doing enough to reduce homelessness, saying: "This is a policy choice. Housing is a basic human need. In the wealthiest nation in the world, solutions are in reach."
"The research is clear: Rental assistance promotes housing stability and is key to solving homelessness. Reducing homelessness will require *expanding* rental assistance, not cutting it or taking it away from people who need it to make ends meet," she explained. "Under the status quo, deep racial and other inequities in homelessness and housing insecurity persist, due to income and wealth inequities stemming from generations of discrimination in housing, education, and employment."
"Policymakers' choices left many communities [without] the resources to respond as need increased, like after natural disasters, surges in market rents, or when some people who recently came to the U.S. seeking asylum or work opportunities had nowhere to live," Bailey added. "Homelessness is unacceptable—and solvable—regardless of who experiences it."
According to HUD's statement:
Migration had a particularly notable impact on family homelessness, which rose 39% from 2023-24. In the 13 communities that reported being affected by migration, family homelessness more than doubled. Whereas in the remaining 373 communities, the rise in families experiencing homelessness was less than 8%. Rents have also stabilized significantly since January 2024. Since then, HUD has added 435,000 new rental units in the first three quarters of 2024; that's more than 120,000 new units each quarter. The PIT Count was conducted at the tail of significant increases in rental costs, as a result of the pandemic and nearly decades of under-building of housing. Rents are flat or even down in many cities since January.
The Maui fire, in addition to other natural disasters, had an impact on the increase in homelessness. In Hawaii, more than 5,200 people were sleeping in disaster emergency shelters on the night of the PIT count due to the Maui fire. HUD continues to work diligently with the state of Hawaii and Maui County through funding and technical assistance to support long-term recovery from the fire. Over the last year, since the PIT Count was conducted, rental costs have stabilized, with rents down in some cities.
Like Bailey, leaders at advocacy groups called on policymakers—at all levels—to do far more to help unhoused people.
"The answer to ending homelessness is ensuring everyone has access to safe, stable, and affordable housing," Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a Friday statement responding to the new data.
"Our leaders must immediately expand the resources to rehouse people without homes and assist the rapidly growing number of people who cannot afford skyrocketing rents," Oliva continued. "This record-setting increase in homelessness should sound the alarm for federal, state, and local lawmakers to advance evidence-based solutions to this crisis."
Renee Willis, incoming interim CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, similarly stressed that "increased homelessness is the tragic, yet predictable, consequence of underinvesting in the resources and protections that help people find and maintain safe, affordable housing."
"As advocates, researchers, and people with lived experience have warned, the number of people experiencing homelessness continues to increase as more people struggle to afford sky-high housing costs," she said.
"These data confirm what we already know: that too many of our friends, neighbors, and family members are experiencing the crisis of not having a place to call home," Willis added. "Without significant and sustained federal investments to make housing affordable for people with the lowest incomes, the affordable housing and homelessness crisis in this country will only continue to worsen."
Some progressive U.S. lawmakers weighed in on social media Friday. Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) emphasized that "as housing prices increase, homelessness increases. Homelessness is a housing problem."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that "this is the richest country on Earth. 770,000 Americans should not be homeless, and 20 million more should not be spending over half their incomes on rent or a mortgage."
"We need to invest in affordable housing," Sanders added, "not Trump's massive tax breaks for billionaires."
This post has been updated with comment from U.S. Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
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Why Society Cannot Sweep Its Way Out of Homelessness
Officials justify sweeps for safety and sanitation reasons, but in the end they harm and displace people who have nowhere else to go. It's the opposite of a solution, especially when we know what's needed and what works.
Dec 21, 2024
This summer, the Supreme Court’s Grants Passruling made it much easier for local governments to criminalize homelessness. Since then, cities and states across the country have stepped up their harassment of people for the “crime” of not having a place to live.
Penalizing homelessness has increasingly taken the form of crackdowns on encampments — also known as “sweeps,” which have received bipartisan support. California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered state agencies to ramp up encampment sweeps, while President-elect Donald Trump has also pledged to ban encampments and move people to “tent cities” far from public view.
Evidence shows that these sweeps are harmful and unproductive — and not to mention dehumanizing.
Housing justice advocates caution that sweeps disrupt peoples’ lives by severing their ties to case workers, medical care, and other vital services. Many unhoused people also have their personal documents and other critical belongings seized or tossed, which makes it even harder to find housing and work.
Sweeps, like punitive fines and arrests, don’t address the root of the problem — they just trap people in cycles of poverty and homelessness.
According to a ProPublica investigation, authorities in multiple cities have confiscated basic survival items like tents and blankets, as well as medical supplies like CPAP machines and insulin. Other people lost items like phones and tools that impacted their ability to work.
Teresa Stratton from Portland toldProPublica that her husband’s ashes were even taken in a sweep. “I wonder where he is,” she said. “I hope he’s not in the dump.”
Over the summer, the city of Sacramento, California forcefully evicted 48 residents — mostly women over 55 with disabilities — from a self-governed encampment known as Camp Resolution. The camp was located at a vacant lot and had been authorized by the city, which also owned the trailers where residents lived.
One of the residents who’d been at the hospital during the sweep was assured that her belongings would be kept safe. However, she told me she lost everything she’d worked so hard to acquire, including her car.
The loss of her home and community of two years, along with her possessions, was already traumatizing. But now, like most of the camp residents, she was forced back onto the streets — even though the city had promised not to sweep the lot until every resident had been placed in permanent housing.
Aside from being inhumane, the seizure of personal belongings raises serious constitutional questions — especially since sweeps often take place with little to no warning and authorities often fail to properly store belongings. Six unhoused New Yorkers recently sued the city on Fourth Amendment grounds, citing these practices.
Sweeps, like punitive fines and arrests, don’t address the root of the problem — they just trap people in cycles of poverty and homelessness. Encampments can pose challenges to local communities, but their prevalence stems from our nation’s failure to ensure the fundamental human right to housing.
People experiencing homelessness are often derided as an “eyesore” and blamed for their plight. However, government policies have allowed housing, a basic necessity for survival, to become commodified and controlled by corporations and billionaire investors for profit.
Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage has remained stagnant at $7.25 since 2009 and rent is now unaffordable for half of all tenants. Alongside eroding social safety nets, these policies have resulted in a housing affordability crisis that’s left at least 653,000 people without housing nationwide.
While shelters can help some people move indoors temporarily, they aren’t a real housing solution, either.
Human rights groups report that shelters often don’t meet adequate standards of housing or accommodate people with disabilities. Many treat people like they’re incarcerated by imposing curfews and other restrictions, such as not allowing pets. Safety and privacy at shelters are also growing concerns.
Officials justify sweeps for safety and sanitation reasons, but in the end they harm and displace people who have nowhere else to go. Instead, governments should prioritize safe, affordable, dignified, and permanent housing for all, coupled with supportive services.
Anything else is sweeping the problem under the rug.
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