Homelessness: resulting effect of a failing economy
Currently, there has been an overwhelmingly aggressive approach to remedy the increasingly concerning issue that homelessness has become. Encampment sweeps and other hostile tactics have been deeply favored time after time by political leaders despite these clearly creating more problems. Not only are these poor attempts at a solution dehumanizing, but they are not properly aiming at the major cause for homelessness, which evidently is our failing economy. The massive increase in housing, food, resources, and transportation without a proportionate increase in wages has created a deeply suffocating environment in which financial security alone is rare, let alone growth.
Although environmental and personal factors can increase an individual’s risk of homelessness, the overall driving force behind the nearly national rise of homelessness rates is the out of control increase in cost of living. Said cost of living can include factors such as rent to income ratios, price to income ratios, rent costs, home prices, transportation costs, and grocery costs. In comparison to other factors such as substance addiction, mental health, social safety net, or poverty, studies have shown the connection between homelessness rates and cost of living is far more substantial. Recently, many metro areas in the US that have seen a drastic rise in average rent costs along with other cost of living factors have also, expectedly, seen a rise in homelessness. Half of renters spend up to 30% of their paycheck on housing and about a quarter spend at least 50% of their income on housing. These figures, created from US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) point-in-time estimates in 2017 and 2022, provide a visual representation of the link between homelessness and an increase in housing costs.
The development of affordable housing, even in cases involving private rooms in buildings where kitchens and bathrooms are shared, has been severely crippled nationwide over the last few decades. Even though housing like this may not necessarily be ideal, affordable options such as the one mentioned have historically been a huge aid in the decline of homelessness. With the current lack of development, many individuals, including those living with a disability, are far more likely to be left without housing. The massive disproportionate cost of living to average wages along with the complete lack of attention to development of affordable housing are some of the largest causes for America’s rampant rate of homelessness. Before blaming individuals for their personal factors that may or may not increase their risk of homelessness, the disgusting greed of landlords and corporations should be addressed. We cannot expect homelessness to be addressed via further marginalization. Instead, the pockets holding billions of dollars should lend a helping hand and consider themselves satiated for possibly the first time in American history. Fellow citizens who have been dealt the most unfortunate cards are not the enemy. The enemy is the corporation that won’t hand out raises, the landlord who treats tenants as numbers instead of individuals, the overflowing pocket that takes more from the one holding pennies. The enemy is corporate greed enabled by federal policy and the lack of mass action.
Resources:
The Cost of Living Index as a Primary Driver of Homelessness in the United States: A Cross-State Analysis
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10574586/
How Housing Costs Drive Levels of Homelessness
New study says high housing costs, low income push Californians into homelessness
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