US homelessness up 12% from 2022, hits highest level since 2007

There is one class of homeless that we see - the mentally ill, drug addicted, drunk, whatever, sleeping on the street, shitting on the sidewalk.<p>But there&#x27;s also another class of homeless we don&#x27;t see. They have jobs, they might be your coworker or classmate. But they live out of a car or at a homeless shelter.<p>It&#x27;s worth keeping that in mind.

We underbuilt housing for 30 years leading to the pandemic. This is the result of that.<p>New housing units per new person. Dashed line at median. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fred.stlouisfed.org&#x2F;graph&#x2F;fredgraph.png?g=1cYTJ" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fred.stlouisfed.org&#x2F;graph&#x2F;fredgraph.png?g=1cYTJ</a>

Landlords will soon strong-arm their tenants into granting &quot;permission based access&quot; to their personal financial accounts to fintech firms like FunnelLeasing (that, in turn, use services like Finicity.com) to monitor their tenants IN REAL TIME from the moment of application, throughout the entire lease period, and at every renewal, with AI models making decisions about how to rate the relationship on a level never before possible.<p>It will literally be possible for the landlords to know which of their tenants are insolvent before many of those tenants know! (An insolvent tenant that has not yet filed for bankruptcy can usually be summarily evicted under contract law, but previously, collecting such evidence of insolvency was time consuming and not cost effective, giving the tenant time to pull out of their tailspin before missing rent payments and filing a bankruptcy petition.)<p>In practical terms, it means that people just starting out (or starting again) are going to be heavily marginalized and wind up on the streets, group homes, etc. after one of life&#x27;s many possible adverse events leads to the suspension of their income and depletion of their reserve funds (layoff; family medical issue; automobile accident, etc.) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;56u6g0POvo0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;56u6g0POvo0</a>

Seen from the outside the US has an extremely harsh opinions on the homeless. I have often read of homeless people use of public libraries, as an argument against having public libraries at all. With a small social safety net, its weird to think that one can be without large amounts of homelessness.

This is incredibly sad, and also very disappointing.<p>Whatever we&#x27;ve been doing to solve the shortage of low-income housing in the US <i>is not working</i>. At all.<p>We <i>must</i> try different approaches, even if they ruffle a lot of feathers.

The article neglected to link to the actual report, which was the USA’s Department of Housing and Urban Development’s January 2023 Point-in-Time Count Report.<p>Press release: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usich.gov&#x2F;news-events&#x2F;news&#x2F;hud-releases-january-2023-point-time-count-report" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usich.gov&#x2F;news-events&#x2F;news&#x2F;hud-releases-january-...</a><p>Report: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hud.gov&#x2F;press&#x2F;press_releases_media_advisories&#x2F;HUD_No_23_278" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hud.gov&#x2F;press&#x2F;press_releases_media_advisories&#x2F;HU...</a>

I&#x27;m involved in an Intervention Hostel in Poland&#x2F;Europe. Many people need short-term help, not only with homelessness but they also need some real support.<p>What is provided by the city, is only some night shelter, where they can eat, sleep, and wash. The thing they don&#x27;t get is a psychiatrist and psychological treatment. The Intervention Hostel provides that too.<p>From my perspective, one of the main problems is that, in general, people are not interested in helping those homeless people. We have problems with gathering money, there is no city support, and we also have higher costs (because of the psychiatrist and psychological treatment). We have quite nice results, but every three months we think about closing it due to lack of funds.<p>The thing that made me really sad was that when a couple of days ago one of Polish parliament members hit a woman and used a fire extinguisher on a hanukkah menorah, people gathered over $50k in just a couple of hours to support him.<p>However, when I was in USA a couple of years ago, I have never seen so many homeless people on the streets. This is really worrying and sad.

&gt;blobstreaming.org<p>Mostly posted by OP: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;from?site=blobstreaming.org">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;from?site=blobstreaming.org</a> (16 out of 22 posts &quot;by safaa1993&quot;)

&quot;653,000 people in the USA were homeless at the beginning of 2023&quot;<p>I&#x27;m always impressed with these statistics of world richest country.

&gt; The United States has more homeless people than ever since the country began measuring the size of the homeless population annually in 2007.<p>Pretty important seeming, and a little surprising.<p>So based on this wording the homeless population is higher than its ever been since we started recording it?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pbssocal.org&#x2F;shows&#x2F;democracy-now&#x2F;clip&#x2F;cities-give-thousands-of-homeless-people-one-way-bus-tickets-to-leave-town" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pbssocal.org&#x2F;shows&#x2F;democracy-now&#x2F;clip&#x2F;cities-giv...</a><p>It really bothers me that quite a few cities want to address homelessness by shipping them to California on taxpayer dollars and then California is given a hard time for not housing them all. California really needs to be building a database and only serving Californias who have become homeless and helping get the others back to their home states. There is no moral obligation to give somebody who took a bus from Oklahoma for free a home in some of the most expensive cities in the country.<p>Do people realize how difficult it is for normal person to move across the USA? I did it before, it was expensive and a difficult move. Housing is a problem and it’s sad that moving cross country will continue to become less and less accessible to people who could provide California economy a nice boost

We are in the period following the end of COVID era relief, including, in many areas, eviction protection. Without diving into the politics of whether or not that relief was a good idea or not, this makes complete sense.

Seeing that wages mostly remained same but inflation shot up, I’d imagine homelessness would also shoot up.<p>It is a paradox that the world’s richest country has such a high level of homelessness.<p>I think in 50 years we’ll either view current homelessness and poverty now like we view slavery or that the technoelite will use AI and regulatory capture and further the divide with quarter of country barely surviving.<p>US compared to its developed peers has lower life expectancy. That surprised me.<p>So many people refusing care because they can’t afford it and die early.<p>US is really a country of extremes.

650k out of 340M is an astonishing number. That&#x27;s almost one in 500 people who don&#x27;t have a place to call home in the richest country in the world. There were more than 500 people in my high school class ...<p>Anything that affects 650k people has more than one cause, but we have mountains of evidence to show us the main cause: housing is too expensive.<p>We don&#x27;t build enough housing and the housing we do build is far too expensive. We then give homeowners and real estate developers so many tax breaks, loans, and other incentives such that America is completely addicted to housing-as-investment and the ever-rising price of a roof over one&#x27;s head.<p>It makes me ashamed to live here. It makes me ashamed to have a home of my own.<p>If you&#x27;re in the Bay Area and you want to help locally, I can personally recommend Larkin Street Youth Services as an excellent organization: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;larkinstreetyouth.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;larkinstreetyouth.org&#x2F;</a>

What about embracing forms of tent cities rather than disparaging them? Homo Sapiens have been sleeping in teepees and portable huts for roughly a hundred thousand years; we have evolved to survive in such. Have shared showers, restrooms, washrooms, etc. I can&#x27;t say it would work in all climates, but in many.

My local news coverage[1] of this story linked to the Federal data[2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.king5.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;homeless&#x2F;washington-rise-homelessness&#x2F;281-2993299b-8b9f-474b-9b9c-73f011b85037" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.king5.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;homeless&#x2F;washington...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.huduser.gov&#x2F;portal&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;2023-AHAR-Part-1.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.huduser.gov&#x2F;portal&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;2023-...</a>

Discussion last week<p><i>Homelessness reaches highest reported level in the U.S. in 2023</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38663740">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38663740</a>

Why should I care?<p>Dealing with homelessness is a massive money suck with no real return (in the quarter).<p>Homeless people arent making any money that goes into taxes... or businesses.<p>Homeless people aren&#x27;t stimulating the economy.<p>Laws that apply equally to everyone (like not living on the streets) can be used to make them go elsewhere.<p>I don&#x27;t see why they matter at all. We all know &quot;The Economy&quot; is rich peoples&#x27; assets, and these people don&#x27;t matter one bit. And, &quot;The Economy&quot; is doing GREAT!<p>&#x2F;I wish this was only sarcasm...

In addition to an insufficient stock of housing, people really struggle with the down payment on a home. It would make a huge difference if the federal government had an accessible program that gave lower&#x2F;low-mid income people guaranteed loans at a subsidized rate (maybe a gradual phase out up to a family income of 150k?).

Ezra Klein&#x27;s podcast has a good summary of the recent report:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;podtail.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;podcast&#x2F;the-ezra-klein-show-1&#x2F;what-we-learned-from-the-deepest-look-at-homelessn&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;podtail.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;podcast&#x2F;the-ezra-klein-show-1&#x2F;what-we...</a>

We should definitely give more money to Bezos, Musk and the like, I&#x27;m sure that will fix the problem.

Yet another side-effect of increased wealth inequality. You can call it a homelessness, housing, socioeconomic, or political crisis, but it&#x27;s all a manifestation of one central problem. I worry this skew will only be further exacerbated by the asymmetric yields of ML-driven market capture, since we have no cohesive plans to smooth this transition in the United States.

&quot;Homelessness up 12%? Maybe we shipped our housing budget overseas by mistake.

Fentanyl is also responsible for a lot of this current cap, at least from my perspective in a big west coast city. It seems like all unhoused neighbors are on it, but of course that could just be selection bias (the ones you notice are having fent crises).

There is evidence all around us that things aren’t as rosy as some politicians and media talking heads would have you believe.<p>The opposite can also be true of course. That things aren’t as dire as opposition personalities would have you believe.