Each time I come to America I have this culture shock of seeing homeless tents in the cities. I don’t know why this time there seem to be more, or maybe I didn’t notice it last time.
Those who know what it was like in the past twenty years, are there more homeless now? And if yes, why? What changed in 20 years?
12 comments
Well, the population increasing definitely causes it, however there are a lot of people immigrating to the United States and it’s hard getting work if you do not have connections and/or are very poor. Also, the United States underwent the 2008 recession and also underwent Covid which did not help. As well as the shrinking middle class and a pretty big drug crisis causing ppl to stay homeless.
Number of homeless has decreased nationwide, since they started measuring it 20 or so years ago, from ~650,000 to ~580,000. However in certain places, mostly high cost areas with limited housing, homelessness has increased dramatically over the past decade and is at an all-time high.
You also have to differentiate between the *prevalence* of homelessness and the *visibility* of homelessness. Not all homeless people live in tents, many live in shelters and may not be as visible on the street. Even where homeless numbers haven’t increased, some places have seen homelessness become more visible on the streets due an onslaught of cheap powerful narcotics, changed policies regarding law enforcement, development on empty lots where homeless used to hang out (in cities that have experienced explosive growth), and reduced shelter capacities during the pandemic.
No.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahar/2022-ahar-part-1-pit-estimates-of-homelessness-in-the-us.html
You do understand how population works right? Reproduction and all of that?
No.
We have lower rates than many European countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_homeless_population
What we do often have worse is people “living rough” or outdoors than many of those same countries.
So for instance while the UK has about 3.5 times as many homeless per capita the US has about 7 times as many people living on the streets themselves.
No and there are a lot of first world countries that actually have a higher homeless rate per capita than the US…
You’ve already gotten your answer (“no”), but I think it’s no by _a lot_ if you look at it per capita. Homelessness was rampant during the Great Depression; [there were an estimated 2 million homeless people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States), which would have been ~1.5% of the total population at the time. The current estimate is closer to 0.17% of the population (and a lower total number, despite having over twice the population).
I see like 20 hobo’s frequent around the city.
Since just shy of a decade ago in my city, there’s been a lot more tolerance for drug addicted vagrants to build elaborate encampments without much fear of removal. It was shocking to me because I was in the Army, and every time I visited home, I noticed more and more tents all over the place. No, it wasn’t at this point before.
“Homeless” gets conflated with “vagrancy” a lot. You don’t see families in these tents or children. They’re usually people dealing with some kind addiction or behavioral issue or both. It’s very controversial to do much about it because of civil rights being interpreted to allow people who don’t want to be in shelters to take over sidewalks, parks, and hoard junk, stolen bikes, etc. Meanwhile gangs regulate these encampments, which is a handy way to consolidate their customers. So there’ll be lots of drug use, violence, prostitution, assault, happening.
Good intentions and naïveté, and some disingenuousness, helped balloon this issue into the problem we have today. People are frustrated and supposedly the new mayor is promising to clean the city. We’ll see.
FWIW, the problem is more focused in certain areas of LA rather than all over. It just sucks that some of those areas happen to be the areas tourists are most interested in. Also well-known areas that some vagrants make a beeline for when they get to town.
I doubt there are more than there were during the Great Depression.
Hoovervilles were all across the country.
Growing up I never saw homeless people. Now specially near the freeways you’ll see little camps.