Walking down the street, we see individuals and families, our neighbors, without a home of their own, living in our shelters or even on our streets. Too often, we turn away or avoid acknowledging their struggles at all. Whether it’s a veteran trying to keep warm on a cold night, young people sleeping on sidewalks, or a mother and her child asking for help, these are the faces of homelessness.
HUD and 19 other federal agencies are on a mission to end homelessness as we know it. In 2010, the Obama Administration launched Opening Doors, the nation’s first comprehensive strategy to prevent and end homelessness, and since then the number of persons experiencing homelessness is declining. The Plan seeks to connect housing, health, education, and human service programs together so that they are engaged and coordinated to prevent and end homelessness. This is an audacious strategy but one that government at every level is serious about.
HUD just released its latest national estimate of homelessness in America. The 2014 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress includes data from more than 3,000 cities and counties across the U.S. Even during the challenging economic climate we find ourselves in, we are making real and meaningful progress.
During one night in late January of 2014, volunteers across the nation conducted a count of their local homeless populations and found that on a single night last January 578,424 total persons were in emergency shelters, transitional housing programs or living unsheltered on the streets. That represents an overall 10 percent decline since 2010, including a remarkable 25 percent drop in the number our neighbors living on the streets, in their cars and in other places not meant for people to live.
In fact, since the launch of Opening Doors, these communities report homelessness is on the decline in every major category—veterans (down 33 percent); individuals experiencing chronic homelessness (down 21 percent); and families with children (down 15 percent). And while communities reported a slight decrease in the number of unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness, we know we have to improve our understanding of this vulnerable population and how we can better serve them.
Overall, these numbers demonstrate that we’re making progress on ending homelessness. We also know there is much more work to do for families and youth, especially given the lack of funding for affordable housing that could prevent many of these families from falling into homelessness in the first place. The Department of Education recently found more than 1.2 million school-aged children a year lacked a home of their own. More than 75 percent of these families with children were living doubled up with friends or in hotels.
Many families who end up in our shelters come from these doubled-up living situations. There are growing numbers of families receiving no government housing assistance who pay more half their monthly income on rent, who live in deplorable conditions, or both. These very low-income renters are at extreme risk of becoming homeless themselves as are ex-offenders leaving prison and young people aging out of foster care.
There are a number of ways to measure homelessness—HUD and local planning agencies across the country measure homelessness at the street and at the shelter level on a single-night each year. These local communities also record and report on the number of individuals and families who spend at least one night in a shelter over the course of a full year. The Department of Education seeks to gauge the number of public school kids who are precariously housed over an entire year. Rather than relying upon any one of these yardsticks, we use all of them to drive our response. Each of these data sources expand our understanding of homelessness and inform our actions to end it, however homelessness is defined.
As someone who has worked in this field for 15 years, I’ve held firm to a core belief — those who are experiencing homelessness aren’t problems, they’re people with stories of their own. Whether it’s the couple evicted from their apartment or the veteran who is having difficulty adjusting to life after service, they don’t need a handout. They need housing.
A generation ago, homelessness was a different thing. Those on the front lines of caring for those experiencing homelessness will tell you today’s homelessness is not the same challenge it was even 20 years ago. Our response must rise to this different challenge. We can never surrender to the idea that homelessness is an unavoidable part of the human condition and that there will always be ‘the homeless among us.’ Instead of turning a blind eye, we must break the cycle of homelessness and not just because it saves taxpayer dollars to do so, but because it is who we are as a nation.
Jennifer Ho is the Senior Advisor for Housing and Services at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
