By Sue Coyle
More than 650,000 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States on one night in 2023. Those were the results of the 2023 Point-in-Time Count, an annual count of individuals experiencing both sheltered and unsheltered homelessness required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The results showed an increase from the year prior, as more than 70,000 more individuals were counted as compared with 2022. Additionally, “The 2023 Point-In-Time (PIT) count is the highest number of people reported as experiencing homelessness on a single night since reporting began in 2007. The overall increase reflects the increases in all homeless populations. Homelessness among persons in families with children experiencing homelessness rose by 16 percent. Similarly, the rise in individuals experiencing homelessness was 11 percent,” according to the 2023 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress.
This data is just a glimpse of the current housing crisis and also is likely an underestimate of the actual number of people experiencing homelessness—a number that does not even include those on the brink of homelessness, unable to pay for their housing or unable to pay for other necessities once housing has been covered.
Of course, today’s crisis is not the first housing crisis in the United States. “It sometimes feels like we’re on this hamster wheel. It feels like it’s never ending,” says Emily Kenney, LCSW, systems change director at Impact in Milwaukee. However, that does not change the hardship of it and the need for action to mitigate it.
For social workers, effecting change in the housing crisis requires an understanding of the systems at play and the ways in which they need to evolve to help the individual.
The Housing Crisis
There are a number of factors that impact housing and individuals’ ability to afford and maintain housing at present. “When we think about the driving forces behind the housing crisis, we think of two main things that are happening: There’s a severe shortage of housing that’s available and affordable; and there’s a widening gap between income and housing costs. Both of them are systemic failures,” says Sarah Saadian, senior vice president of public policy and field organizing at the National Low Income Housing Coalition in Washington, D.C.
In fact, The Pew Charitable Trusts estimate there is a shortage of between four million and seven million homes in the U.S.
“Communities across the country, not just the big cities, are dealing with massive housing shortages overall, especially for affordable housing. Additionally, this is often happening in the context of population increase within those communities. As demand increases, the supply rarely keeps pace,” says Amanda Aykanian, PhD, assistant professor of social work at the University at Buffalo in New York.
Read the full feature article at NASW Social Work Advocates magazine.
