Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

We&#x27;re a country of 350,000,000 people. Leaving 500,000 outside simply because municipalities don&#x27;t want them around is inexcusable.<p>Solution in two parts<p>1. Make it legal to build homes where people live (looking at you California, specifically LA, SF, SV)<p>2. Build dorm style shelters for anyone that would otherwise sleep outside<p>There&#x27;s complicating issues like not enough addiction treatment and mental health facilities, but neither of those is improved by leaving people to sleep on the street.

The huge decrease in homelessness in North Dakota is probably due to the end of the fracking boom. The map compares the homelessness rate from 2015 to 2020, and 2015 was just a few years after the height of the boom. During the early 2010s rents in North Dakota shot up enormously as tens of thousands of workers poured into the state to support the industry. There wasn&#x27;t enough existing housing to support the newcomers so there was a lot of crowding into trailers etc. and it&#x27;s no surprise that a lot of people ended up homeless.<p>Fracking has leveled off for the past few years and many of the workers have moved back to other oil fields so homelessness has decreased dramatically.

Excellent breakdown of data on homeless populations across the US. It could use a better title. This is worth looking at. It is not your usual opinion piece on the topic. It&#x27;s all data and it&#x27;s very good.

This data is interesting because it illustrates how few chronic homeless people there are, and yet people who live in cities with large homeless populations will tell you how disruptive they can be. In NYC, a homeless person getting in your subway car ruins the entire ride. This tiny portion of the population has an outsized impact on everyone else. For this reason, among others, society should find some help for these people.

&gt; There are some exceptions. For one thing, despite being close to California, Nevada and some of the Montana-esque states saw big decreases in certain categories.<p>Someone people would look at this and go wow, Nevada and the rest did a great job providing shelters and help to their homeless.<p>I think a more realistic answer is that they just shipped them to California.

I live in Denver, like any other metropolitan area there has always been a homeless population. What has been different is since 2016 there has been a staggering growth in the number of tents and so called tent cities. This isn&#x27;t a problem just downtown either even if it is most visible there. The issue has expanded outside downtown and is filling in vacant properties in suburbia as well. Places like Aurora, almost every open space park, bike paths, bridges, everywhere you can fit a tent is turning into a homeless encampment. The worse part is I feel helpless, I&#x27;m making good money and barley able to pay rent. I feel powerless to help even if I could.

Homelessness expert here. This data set is garbage. HUD data only includes those in the federally mandated HMIS (Homeless Information Management System). This data excludes 1) people who don&#x27;t access services; 2) people who access services from private, non-federally funded programs (like faith-based groups); and 3) typically undercounts those with SUD, mental-health issues, and especially people of color.<p>A recent BGC study estimates that, in Seattle, for example, HMIS data doesn&#x27;t include up to 40% of people in encampments.<p>Garbage In -&gt; Garbage Out. Pretty sweet effort, though. Wish the feds were smart like this.

One piece of analysis I&#x27;d be interested to see is whether the transition probabilities among the 4 categories along with the implied 5th category of &quot;not homeless&quot; have changed.<p>This is harder to get good data for because it would require tracking individuals across time. The payoff is that it would likely reveal evidence of structural changes if such changes exist.<p>At the population level it is hard to tell whether and where changes are happening. Getting the transition probabilities would allow for more effective targeting of interventions (though most of the folks who work on this already know which transitions are the hardest to recover from).

I think the articles problem is the lack of a definition of &quot;crisis&quot;, and that leads to a bad mismatch between the headline and what is a reasonable look at the data.<p>My issues with the article are:<p>It starts from a too high aggregation level - almost no one is homeless in California, they are homeless usually in a very narrow area e.g. within 500 metres of bridge X.<p>Percentage change in raw numbers are not a good way to measure &quot;crisis&quot;, and especially not at a state or city aggregated level. It seems more like traffic to me. Even in peak hour traffic, many roads are free of traffic, and the worst affected roads are those where the level of cars exceeds the roads ability to cope. That happens in a thin range of total cars per minute for specific roads, not due to X% increase overall. The same is true of homelessness in a city vs ... let&#x27;s call them &quot;hotspots&quot;.<p>Perhaps even more important than numbers in specific areas is the actual conditions homelessness creates in those areas. &quot;Bad conditions&quot; could be everything from human faeces on the street increasing, to murders, over doses, disease and unsanitary conditions, and it is possible for &quot;bad conditions&quot; to decrease and homeless numbers go up, or visa versa. That is harder to measure for sure, but probably closer to what most people mean by crisis.

It&#x27;s really good to see the breakdown into the four broad classes. The big question: should we as a society be allowed to force permanently unsheltered people with substance abuse and mental illness into some kind of facility for treatment? Most people who even want to do anything about these problems would probably say no but I think it&#x27;s at least worth asking.

There is mostly a <i>housing</i> crisis, with homelessness downstream of housing.<p>I originally left this comment a few months ago, but: CA especially has been underbuilding housing for close to 50 years (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;14&#x2F;sf-housing&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;14&#x2F;sf-housing&#x2F;</a>) and now has a severe housing shortage, to the point where a parodic response, like &quot;California will try absolutely anything to reduce homelessness, except build more housing&quot; (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mcsweeneys.net&#x2F;articles&#x2F;i-will-do-anything-to-end-homelessness-except-build-more-homes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mcsweeneys.net&#x2F;articles&#x2F;i-will-do-anything-to-en...</a>) is the only reasonable one.<p>I&#x27;ve worked on Prop HHH and other proposals designed to reduce homelessness in California: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;seliger.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;08&#x2F;30&#x2F;l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-fills-back-proposition-hhh-facilities-program&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;seliger.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;08&#x2F;30&#x2F;l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-...</a>, but none of them work, or can work, without making housing easier to build.<p>Before someone mentions &quot;mental illness&quot; and &quot;drugs&quot; and other contributors to homelessness, yes those are real factors: that said, the lower the cost of housing, the easier it is for someone on the margin of being housed or being homeless to stay housed. The lower the cost, the easier it is for family, SSDI, Section 8, and other income supports to keep a person housed. As the cost of housing goes up, the number of people who fall from the margins of &quot;housed&quot; to &quot;homeless&quot; goes concomitantly up. So yes, mental illness and drug abuse are factors, but they&#x27;re factors exacerbated by housing costs, and they&#x27;re really red herrings relative to overall housing costs.<p>The homelessness problem is intractable without zoning reform, and the removal of barriers to new housing, whether those barriers are height maximums, parking space minimums, or &quot;neighborhood input&quot; or &quot;community input,&quot; both of which are functionally barriers to building anything, anywhere.<p>Homelessness is mostly a housing problem: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slowboring.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;homelessness-housing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slowboring.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;homelessness-housing</a>. We can and should remove barriers to building new housing, and, until we do that, we&#x27;re going to keep seeing these problems. CA SB-9 and SB-10 are steps in the right direction but they&#x27;re very small steps. Tokyo&#x27;s approach would be better: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16704501" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16704501</a>. Even places like New York are proposing density reductions, insanely: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;spectrumlocalnews.com&#x2F;nys&#x2F;central-ny&#x2F;coronavirus&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;18&#x2F;cuomo-outlines-mandatory-statewide-density-reduction--other-measures-to-combat-spread-of-covid-19-" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;spectrumlocalnews.com&#x2F;nys&#x2F;central-ny&#x2F;coronavirus&#x2F;202...</a>.

&quot;To eliminate poverty it was necessary to conceive of an industrial system more productive than our own. Such will be universal harmony which will produce at least triple — yes, without exaggeration — at least triple the yield of the civilised system in a well-cultivated empire. Accordingly, while Harmony will greatly increase the wealth of the well-to-do, it will bring about an excessive increase in that of the people, to whom it will guarantee a salary or in old age a decent minimum below which they cannot fall. This beneficence will be all the more simple in that humanity will reproduce much less in Harmony than in civilisation.<p>This is far removed from the theories of the philosophers, some of whom, the Demagogues, seek to rob the rich to provide for the poor. The others, who are called the Economists, do not have the welfare of the people in mind. They think only of enriching empires without worrying themselves about the fate of the individual. Thus the theories of the Economists have greatly enriched England without enriching the English. According to the Tableau de Londres you can find 115,000 paupers, prostitutes, thieves, beggars and unemployed in the city of London alone; the workers of Scotland live in a frightful state of misery. This is nonetheless the consequence of the modern systems which claim to alleviate the suffering of the people.&quot;<p>Charles Fourier, December 1803

The article like most people that haven’t been homeless don’t know anything about homelessness aside from inferring from statistics and knowing what is the problem without actually talking to homeless people. #Vanlife people enjoying parking at the beach are chronically homeless and unsheltered.<p>It’s a great way to dehumanize people’s desires and motivations with wrong assumptions by lying with statistics.

Great piece! One thing to add is to look into why the anecdotes are pervasive.<p>This data does a great job at distinguishing between the unhoused population and the sheltered homeless population.<p>Where the unhoused are visible drives the perception.<p>In California, the same is true, with unhoused being just the tip of the iceberg in the homeless population, the difference is where the unhoused are. In favelas and bazaars in the middle of very expensive areas.<p>Strolling through highly trafficked areas of NYC you wouldnt make the broad reductive assumption that “New York has more homeless people”, whereas strolling through highly trafficked areas of SF&#x2F;LA would be a complete culture shock.<p>It is an interesting topic as it’s not clear how much people know everytime the topic comes up. Is a prologue about distinguishing between unhoused&#x2F;sheltered before engaging further really useful? Hard to say

A lot of people through no fault of their own just cannot &#x27;get it together&#x27;. Either they lack the skills to be employable, do not make or save enough money to afford a permanent residence, or cannot hold down a job for a variety of reason.

Another great reason to not live in LA, homelessness exploded there since rent shot up.<p>Rent effectively doubled from 2009 to 2019. You can ether stay in Mayor Garcetti&#x27;s fun house or leave. Factor in even if your able to starve off homelessness yourself, your still wasting money that&#x27;s better saved. I&#x27;m happy to know America is full of functional cities where it&#x27;s still possible to make it. No this doesn&#x27;t mean you can afford a 2 bdrm on minimum wage, but you can find a room.

This is great work, data I&#x27;ve been very interested in. It would be really fascinating to get to county and city level, where I live there&#x27;s been a crazy increase in people living in tents with severe mental and&#x2F;or substance abuse problems. It does reflect at the state (Oregon) level but I think it&#x27;s a bit misleading because it feels like there are magnet areas where all the increase happens in one spot.

In addition to what&#x27;s mentioned here[1], I like that &quot;unhoused&quot; implies that this is more of a societal problem, opposed to &quot;home-less&quot; which implies a deficit in certain individuals.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.architecturaldigest.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;homeless-unhoused&#x2F;amp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.architecturaldigest.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;homeless-unhoused&#x2F;...</a>

Great article, but I didn&#x27;t see (maybe I missed it) a notice of the fact that homelessness can be correlated with meth, mental illness, etc. with the causation working in either direction. Homelessness could be caused by, or increase the chances of, any of those other factors (or both).

It would be interesting to see these rates alongside housing costs. Here in Seattle the median house price has tripled in the last 10 years and homelessness has shot up along with it.

This article is completely ignorant of the actual situation. These comments by most of you really show your true colors.<p>If you truly believe &quot;mental issues&quot; are &quot;causing homelessness&quot; You are blinded by privilege, deaf by choice, and dumb by default.<p>Greed is causing homlessness and these numbers are ridiculous. We&#x27;re at 16% homelessness here in Atlanta.<p>There are solutions, but not a one of you has the intellectual capacity, balls or creativity to execute.<p>I am in awe at how out of touch these comments are.

Wow. I&#x27;ve talked with people who &quot;lived outside&quot; and realized that they were in very different situations.<p>This article does a good job of breaking it down with a simple analysis. It makes me think of the book that inspired this musical<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Subways_Are_for_Sleeping" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Subways_Are_for_Sleeping</a><p>which described quite a few different situations people were in.

What about red states bussing homeless to the west coast?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;09&#x2F;14&#x2F;us&#x2F;homeless-busing-seattle-san-francisco.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;09&#x2F;14&#x2F;us&#x2F;homeless-busing-seattl...</a><p>Until it&#x27;s not possible to simply ship your problems away (kind of like how we handle recycling), governments are incentivized to do the wrong things.

I wish that there was a breakdown by gender as well. It seems somewhat incomplete as is.

I still have a difficult time understanding how increased homelessness is not a direct result of increased taxes and regulations. The data presented corroborates as much and though correlation doesn’t mean causation, correlation certainly doesn’t indicate a lack of causation either. We go to great lengths to justify the results when the simplest explanation is staring right at you.

Another attempt to convince you that your personal observations must be incorrect because someone found a stat from a study somewhere.<p>LA, Portland &amp; SF– are obviously measurably worse over the past decade. Portland is a case of going from beautiful downtown to cesspool in that timeframe.<p>There are a lot of reasons that stats are misleading. Noise in the data, biases, trivial statistics, incorrect measurement, poor geographic approaches.<p>Please don&#x27;t sit at your desk and tell me what I see out my window doesn&#x27;t exist.