When people talk about "homelessness," they're often referring to street people. Most technically homeless people aren't street people, they're between jobs or living in their car or something like that.
It seems clear that lower rent/housing prices would help with homelessness but I don't think it would help street people.
US HUD segments homeless populations into three dimensions:
- sheltered vs. unsheltered homelessness
- chronic homelessness, where "chronic" is defined as a person with a disability who is "continuously homeless for one year or more, or has experienced at least four episodes of homelessness in the last three years where the combined length of time homeless on those occasions is at least 12 months."
- individuals ("households that were not composed of both adults and children") and families
As of mid-December, the US point-in-time counts of those were:[1]
More than half of all counted unsheltered chronically homeless individuals in the United States in December were in California (44,120 of 78,615; 56% of total unsheltered chronically homeless, 7.6% of total US homeless).
I think if we could just help the out of sorts, hardship cases that are 'newer' homeless, or maybe classified as 'under-housed', which may include couch-surfers, car/van-lifers, etc. I mean there's levels to homelessness some of which is mental health related and such, some people actually maybe could prefer that life for reasons. There's a lot who are forced into it, and are just down on their luck. These should be a much easier subsection to target for at least fixing things a bit.
It doesn't help that we are basically doing the opposite. In my experience you pretty much have to already be homeless to get any help. It would be nice if you didn't have to lose everything before you get assistance.
> Among the 44,197 homeless shelter stays, on average, a homeless shelter stay was about 77 days, with the median 30 days, and the maximum of 5,030 days (the entry date started in 2002 for this extreme case). ... 2,872 (∼6.5%) homeless shelter stays were just 1 day long, 6,726 homeless shelter stays (∼15%) were between 2 days and 5 days, and 34,695 homeless shelter stays (78.5%) were 10 days or longer. About 81% of all homeless shelter stays were by clients who have experienced recidivism.
Agreed. There is a shortage of _low-cost_ housing. This isn't because of "zoning", it's because low-cost housing became considered undesirable. Think housing projects, SROs, "flop houses", etc. As gentrification occurred and these were closed (and some refurbished into upscale units), their occupants-- and their future occupants-- became homeless.
It seems clear that lower rent/housing prices would help with homelessness but I don't think it would help street people.