National News
WASHINGTON – Homelessness has risen to its highest level on record this yr, driven by aspects equivalent to high rents, stagnant wages and a surge in migrant asylum seekers, the federal government reported Friday.
The variety of homeless people topped 770,000, an 18% increase from the previous yr and the biggest annual increase since counting began in 2007.
The report, released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, showed homelessness rose by a 3rd up to now two years, after declining barely over the past decade.
While the report cited several reasons for the recent surge, including the top of pandemic-era shelter-in-place measures, Biden administration officials in a call with reporters emphasized the role of asylum-seeking migrants who’re undermining the shelter systems where there are Many are overwhelmed by the rise. Officials argued that the refugee crisis had eased for the reason that annual count in January.
“This data is nearly a year old and no longer reflects the situation we are seeing,” Acting Housing Secretary Adrianne Todman said in a prepared statement.
The government doesn’t track the migration status of homeless people, so it’s difficult to separate the 2 crises of domestic poverty and the flight of foreigners from troubled countries – different challenges with different solutions. But the record-breaking increase within the variety of homeless people is more likely to deepen the growing partisan divide on homelessness policy.
Democrats typically blame housing costs, declining wages and scarce rental subsidies, while supporting “Housing First” policies that house the chronically homeless without requiring treatment for mental illness or substance abuse.
Many Republicans are in search of cuts to housing assistance and other social services, blaming what they call liberal permissiveness. They want homeless people to hunt psychiatric or drug addiction help as a condition of their support. President-elect Donald Trump has called for cities to be cleared of encampments and homeless people to be placed in encampments.
“This is just a terrible increase and it shatters any myth that Housing First works,” said Robert Marbut, who served as federal homelessness coordinator during Trump’s first term. He rejected the concept migration was the important reason for the rise in homelessness.
Almost every category of homeless people increased, with particularly large increases amongst children (33%) and folks in families (39%). The number of individuals in shelters increased by a few quarter, while the variety of unsheltered homeless people increased by 7%. The rise in homelessness amongst older adults also continued, with a 6% increase amongst those 65 and older.
According to the report, veterans were the one group to see a decrease in homelessness last yr. This continues a long-term trend driven by bipartisan support for housing and services for the politically popular group, a collaboration that’s at odds with the rancor of the broader homelessness debate. The variety of homeless veterans fell 8% last yr.
More than a 3rd of the homeless – 274,000 – sleep in cars, camps and tents under bridges, places where the danger of violence and disease is especially high.
While California has been the epicenter of the homelessness crisis recently, homelessness there only increased by 3%, much lower than the national average. The state has invested tens of billions in housing and services in recent times.
Dennis Culhane, a professor on the University of Pennsylvania who has long advised the federal government on homelessness data, said about three-quarters of the rise in homelessness occurred within the 4 states hardest hit by asylum seekers – New York, Illinois, Colorado and Massachusetts – together with Hawaii, where wildfires led to mass displacement on Maui. Without migration and natural disasters, he said, homelessness likely would have increased by single digits.
“I worry that people will misinterpret this report and think that there has been a sharp increase in domestic homelessness,” he said. “These numbers should not be used to attack Housing First.”
Evidence that implies migration is a driving force includes timing (the surge began with the surge in asylum seekers in 2022), location and ethnicity, he said. The variety of Latinos experiencing homelessness rose by nearly a 3rd, nearly double the national rate.
Chicago and Denver are among the many cities which have seen sharp declines within the variety of shelters for the reason that January count.
Some analysts, each conservative and progressive, said the concentrate on migration obscures larger issues, including economic inequality and homelessness policies.
“As long as we are still in an affordable housing crisis, we will continue to see increases in homelessness,” said Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, an advocacy group that advocates for increased spending on homeless services.
Oliva noted that homelessness has increased in some groups, likely not including many latest asylum seekers. These include chronically homeless people, whose numbers have increased by almost 20% in two years, and families in rural areas.
Other advocates have tacitly warned that emphasizing the presence of migrants in shelters could increase the danger of deportation.
Stephen Eide of the conservative Manhattan Institute argued that migration didn't contribute a lot to homelessness because it exposed the failings within the service system that encourages people to go to shelters to get help.
“To some extent, homelessness policies can create homelessness,” he said.
Conservatives have change into increasingly critical of the “Housing First” policy that governs federal aid and once enjoyed bipartisan support.
Proponents say the approach is supported by evidence showing that Housing First policies get vulnerable people off the streets and save lives. Most veterans programs use this approach, and homelessness amongst this group has fallen by greater than half within the last 15 years.
But conservatives, including many church service providers, say this approach allows people to evade responsibility for his or her problems and results in repeated bouts of homelessness. They say Housing First's dominance of federal funding is stifling innovation.
“We stopped treating mental illness and substance abuse,” Marbut said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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