Read the following article from The Washington Post, explaining how many Americans are facing homelessness due to unaffordable housing and rising rents, highlighting a growing crisis where even employed individuals are unable to secure stable living conditions.
By: Abha Bhattarai
July 28th, 2024
Homelessness, already at a record high last year, appears to be worsening among workers.
They are plumbers and casino supervisors, pizzeria managers and factory workers. They deliver groceries, sell eyeglasses and unload trucks at Amazon.
And they’re the new, unlikely face of homelessness: Working Americans with decent-paying jobs who simply can’t afford a place to live.
Homelessness, already at a record high last year, appears to be worsening among people with jobs, as housing becomes further out of reach for low-wage earners, according to shelter interviews and upticks in evictions and homelessness tallies around the country. The latest round of point-in-time counts — a tally of people without homes on one given night — show a discernible uptick in homelessness in many parts of the United States, including Southeast Texas (up 61 percent from a year ago), Rhode Island (up 35 percent) and northeast Tennessee (up 20 percent).
While there is no federal data on unhoused workers, shelter administrators and local groups report a spike in first-timers with jobs. In Tulsa, for example, where homelessness rose 26 percent this year, lack of affordable housing ranked as the top reason people said they were homeless, beating out mental health struggles or job loss.
“I work 50 hours a week, and it’s still really hard to keep up,” said Aaron Reed, 22, who makes $21 an hour at an Amazon warehouse near Nashville, and returns to his mother’s Hyundai SUV to sleep. He shares the back seat with their black Lab, Stella, while his mom sleeps up front.
Years of fast-rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing have created a situation where even a strong labor market and rising wages haven’t been enough to offset the financial strains of inflation.
“We are pushing working people into homelessness because they just can’t afford the rent,” said Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California at San Francisco. “The general public doesn’t see these folks as homeless — they’re not as visible as the people who occupy public spaces, who have substance abuse issues or mental health problems. But it’s a catastrophe, and it’s happening just under our eyes.”
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