6mo ago

US homelessness up 18% as affordable housing remains out of reach for many people

The United States saw an 18.1% increase in homelessness this year, a dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in several parts of the country, federal officials said Friday.

Economy @lemmy.world

Amoxtli @thelemmy.club

6mo ago

apnews.com /article/homelessness-population-count-2024-hud-migrants-2e0e2b4503b754612a1d0b3b73abf75f

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6mo ago

US homelessness up 18% as affordable housing remains out of reach for many people

apnews.com /article/homelessness-population-count-2024-hud-migrants-2e0e2b4503b754612a1d0b3b73abf75f

Late Stage Capitalism @lemmy.world

ubergeek @lemmy.today

6mo ago

US homelessness up 18% as affordable housing remains out of reach for many people

apnews.com /article/homelessness-population-count-2024-hud-migrants-2e0e2b4503b754612a1d0b3b73abf75f

37 comments

Protip: it's not affordable housing if we can't afford it.
- Probottom: why do we include migrants in our homelessness statistics if we're not offering them social welfare?
  Propowerbottom: tax brackets should also be influenced by the number of properties a person owns. Unless a real estate agent and actively trying to sell or reno the property, get penalized for hoarding.
  Edit: @metaStatic@kbin.earth I'm disappointed in your correction. Now I just look like a fool! I thought we were ride or die!!
  
  Almost like we shouldn't tie human necessities to profit.
  Seems like a very similar situation common to many Americans.
- I am really sick and tired of "Affordable Housing" being neoliberal jargon for "subsidized housing." It's an extremely biased framing of the debate that makes it hard to give fair consideration to other means of achieving actual affordability, such as -- just for example -- fixing the motherfucking zoning code so that developers aren't forced to include expensive amenities like parking spaces and are allowed to build stuff that's cheap enough for people to afford at market rate.
  
  Or keep people from buying multiple properties for investment purposes.
  
  I mean, to effectively have affordable housing without parking lots and screwing traffic, you need real mass transit. Which should really be our focus over the next 15-20 years anyway, besides green energy, of course.
  Speaking of which, we need a moderator for !fuckcars. The previous mod has been afk for 2 months. It's like, your normal browsing plus maybe a five minute commitment per month. Are you interested? Message me.
jfc 18% is a huge increase. What is that compared to historical trends?
- That increase comes on top of a 12% increase in 2023, which HUD blamed on soaring rents and the end of pandemic assistance. The 2023 increase also was driven by people experiencing homelessness for the first time.
  This is the "economy" that the Democrats ran on being a "good economy."
  Two straight years of massive increases in homelessness, but the increases started, shocker, in 2020.
  This is from the AP News article that AP themselves references for the 12% increase in 2023:
  https://apnews.com/article/homelessness-increase-rent-hud-covid-60bd88687e1aef1b02d25425798bd3b1
  The numbers ticked up to about 580,000 in the 2020 count and held relatively steady over the next two years as Congress responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with emergency rental assistance, stimulus payments, aid to states and local governments and a temporary eviction moratorium.
  Jeff Olivet, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, a federal agency, said the extra assistance “held off the rise in homelessness that we are now seeing.” He said numerous factors are behind the problem.
  In other words, homelessness was exploding in 2020 and then was hidden for two years because of government assistance that got some people through some hard times. Obviously it wasn't helping enough if homelessness was still growing during 2020-2022.
  
  What policy decisions or laws enacted by the Biden administration do you think caused this?
- The sharp increase in the homeless population over the past two years contrasts with success the U.S. had been having for more than a decade.
  Going back to the first 2007 survey, the U.S. made steady progress for about a decade in reducing the homeless population as the government focused particularly on increasing investments to get veterans into housing. The number of homeless people dropped from about 637,000 in 2010 to about 554,000 in 2017.
But...but...the unemployment rate is so low. They must actually want to be homeless. /s
- "The economy is outstanding and Biden is the most effective president in history!"
  reddit liberals
  But seriously, it's but hard to see why people think the economy is ass
I don't want to see percentage increase values for things like these. I'd prefer percent of population, or absolute values.
- more than 770,000 people were counted as homeless — a number that misses some people and does not include those staying with friends or family because they do not have a place of their own.
- 770,000 people were counted as homeless
  23 of every 10,000 people in the U.S.
- Then read the article.
- And you would get those of you bothered to read the first three paragraphs of the article.
- “I want to be mad at integers, not percentages”
  
  If 10 people were homeless that's less than 2 new homeless people.
  If 10m are homeless, that's close to 2m new homeless.
Yikes. That is brutal to see.
Mega corps buying up all the housing properties surely has nothing to do with rising housing costs...
Things won't improve until people take a stand and force change
- people always argue against violence, but revolutions don't happen by asking nicely. companies taking your home and driving people to homelessness is "violent".
AP News can't even call it unaffordable. Pathetic.
How Britain almost solved the housing crisis
We all know what must be done.

37 comments