According to USA Today, advocates for the unhoused indicated that the increases over the past few years are unlike anything they have seen, and is a concern for them.
As Ann Oliva, the CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, told the outlet, “The numbers are just mind-boggling to me.”
Other experts, like Shamus Roller, the National Housing Law Project’s executive director, pointed to the conditions that drive homelessness as a factor in the increased point-in-time numbers.
“The underlying conditions driving homelessness are not going the right direction,” Roller told USA Today. “Housing affordability is worse; it’s affecting more people across the country, and so you can’t be surprised that people are essentially falling off the back of the wagon.”
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, homelessness has a more pronounced effect on racial minorities like Black Americans, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, Latinx Americans, and those listed as “Some Other Race.”
Per a press release from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, (HUD) the data likely does not reflect where things currently stand due to changed policies and conditions, some of which they denote in the press release.
According to the press release, significant progress was made among veterans through HUD’s HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Program, which helped facilitate an 8% drop in veterans who are unhoused.
Other advocates for the unhoused, like Adam Ruege, a data analyst with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, indicated that counter to Todman’s quote, the annual point-in-time count is most likely a conservative estimate of the true value of unhoused people in America.
Ruege also pointed out that since the point-in-time count is only a figure from one night, it doesn’t sufficiently contextualize the state of homelessness over an extended period of time.
“It’s just one point in time. It’s a picture, a photograph, as opposed to a video” Ruege told USA Today.
Source: Black Enterprise
