Homelessness Is Down – Or Is It?

You may have missed the news, but it is big. Homelessness in the U.S. is on the decline. According to a report from the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD’s latest estimate of homelessness is now down to a total of 578,424 Americans, which includes 49,933 homeless veterans. As large as the number of homeless people is, it shows a ‘continued general decline’ of homelessness, especially among Veterans’ according to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH).
That is good news indeed for those who have found permanent housing in the past year due to the collaborative work among the 19 Federal Cabinet secretaries and agency heads serving on the USICH. The USICH employs Policy Directors who serve as liaisons with each of the 19 Federal Agencies to develop strategies to make progress on the goals and strategies on a national plan to end homelessness in 10 years. Clearly the news about the drop in homelessness validates the work they have done and is very encouraging.
However, what we are seeing locally is that the homeless are still with us and our beds remain filled. In fact, Michigan saw a six percent increase in homelessness during the past year, while the rest of the nation reported a drop.
Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries houses 4,300 of the reported homeless men, women and children over the course of a year. Among them are parenting or pregnant teens in High School, people with multiple disabilities, the chronically homeless, people with mental illness or chronic diseases, mothers with children, fathers with children, Veterans, and people ranging in age from infants to young adults who aged out of foster care to senior citizens.
The report that HUD has released relies on the success of efforts by volunteers and homeless networks across the nation to do what is called a ‘point in time’ count of homeless people who are found on a single day in shelters, soup kitchens, under bridges, and other locations where homeless may be found. Counts are taken in January, a month when most homeless people will seek help indoors – even those who are the most resistant to using the formal homeless service system. Nonetheless, there are many homeless are identified annually – an estimated one third – who are found on the streets and at grass roots locations.
HUD’s press release stated, “These one-night ‘snapshot’ counts are . . reported to HUD as part of state and local grant applications. While the data reported to HUD does not directly determine the level of a community’s grant funding, these estimates, as well as full-year counts, are crucial in understanding the scope of homelessness and measuring progress in reducing it.”
My first concern about how policy makers will interpret the reported figures is supported by the above statement. It acknowledges that how communities succeed in reducing homelessness at least indirectly impacts funding decisions. Whenever funding decisions are based on data, there are incentives for communities to underreport homelessness or over-report successes on measurable program objectives.
My second concern is that no one, of course, can say how many other homeless people are living in places not meant for human habitation and not found by surveyors. For example, no one can say how many had been living in unsafe houses with no utilities that have since been removed as a necessary part of the blight removal efforts in Detroit. We have talked to many homeless people who have survived for periods of time by living with other homeless people in abandoned houses and who had to leave as demolition crews moved closer to their location. We have seen intact families living in abandoned houses that are on City owned lists of tax reverted houses. Their yards have tricycles and flowers in them and we know their occupants will become homeless when the properties are acquired by investors.
However, the survey very effectively and consistently captures how many homeless are ‘in the network’ but the remaining 30% who are not counted are surviving through a variety of other means, including heavy reliance on faith based networks, kind-hearted strangers who attempt to help homeless individuals, and others.
Many people exhaust government benefits or are not eligible for housing options. This includes people with criminal convictions that bar them from various housing options and those with financial judgments levied against them for a wide variety of reasons. Other people are very frightened by the thought of entering into the social service system that can help them. All of these people turn to faith based and grass-roots charitable organizations that exist to serve sizable numbers of homeless people.
They also serve another group of people not addressed at all by the survey – the near homeless. This includes people raising families in empty buildings or houses and other people who move with regularity from host family to host family and sleep in their basements, attics and garages and on cots or beds until their host must ask them to leave. It also includes families with children who must seek shelter with family members, friends, and even strangers and whose homes may be characterized by chaos, increased stress, and sometimes danger. We have met more than one mother who finally came to shelter because she learned, to her heartbreak, that one of the people in the home she had been living in had been ‘bothering’ her children.