What are your thoughts on what homelessness will look like by 2030 if things do not look better?

23 comments

1. If it doesn’t look better, it’ll probably look worse. That’s the only option your question allows.

2. I don’t expect any major changes

3. 2030 is basically the present at this point.

4. Watch the movie Soylent Green, it will be something like that in the larger cities.

5. A large portion of the homeless issue (not staying at friends/parents houses or instability- sleeping on the street) is largely due to addiction. That needs to be addressed before anything major can be solved

6. Until addiction is focused on with proper help, it will just get worse.

7. The term is “Unhoused”.

   And I can virtually guarantee that by 2030 we’re going to call it something else.

8. Honestly, I think we should just step up enforcement and pass laws making it insanely difficult to be a homeless person. You set up a tent in the park, or on the sidewalk, and it’ll be torn down within the hour.

   Homelessness is only problem because we allow the homeless to exist unbothered. These people need to be rehabilitated, not coddled. Their ability to make their own decisions needs to be revoked.

   I’m not talking about people who are down on their luck. I’m talking about the permahomeless. The tent city living, subway masturbating, professional hobos. They’re a massive source of untapped labor potential. I’d like to propose modestly, that we outlaw homelessness, and give them a chance to work off their debts in a variety of industries that need our help, such as being extras in Hollywood productions, or testing heavy weaponry.

9. We can’t even get basic housing for all or universal healthcare, I doubt we can even get homelessness cut in half by 2030.

10. Under the current social and economic scheme it’ll probably get more visible and more wide spread.

11. Much larger parasitic encampments

    More aggressive and organized thievery

12. It’ll be worse for sure. I’m seeing more and more tents pop up.

13. Until we are willing to talk about the true, overwhelming causes of homelessness, nothing will change.

    How it will look? I imagine certain areas of large cities (that used to be thriving business centers, but due to remote work have dwindled) will become hotspots for crime and drugs.

14. [It hasn’t changed that much since 2006.](https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/#homelessness-trends-over-time) The last 10 years have been pretty consistent. So I’d expect that to continue.

15. Honestly the homelessness situation is radically different in much of the country than it is in some of the West Coast cities. I think there’s a few things going on:

    New York City is one entity whereas Los Angeles County has something like 90+ municipal governments + the county itself. This allows the NYC Department of Homeless Services to concentrate on the problem without the red tape and bureaucracy that a city/town + county government has to wrestle with.

    But let’s be frank, most cities out here don’t have a department like that or if they do, not nearly as funded.

    I think at least until recent years, many cities in the Northeast, New England, Midwest and the South just had a higher tolerance for city government and law enforcement to push those experiencing homelessness outside of the city center. The downtown CBD is just too important to these cities in terms of business and tourism. This doesn’t mean there aren’t public displays of homelessness, but they’ll be spread out and sporadic. Any camps that form will be out of site, and usually are somewhat regularly broken up. Now in recent years with BLM and social justice being at the forefront, homeless bills of rights are becoming more common and these tactics are not seen in the same light.

    And the weather. At some point it just gets s ridiclously hot, cold, or whatnot that temporary shelters have to be set up and then a lot of people who choose the streets will at least choose shelter for those few days.

    TLDR: Because we aren’t given visible displays of homelessness, I think actually advocating for and making improvements and changes is going to be difficult.

16. I’ll probably have offed myself so that’s one less competitor to worry about

17. Probably a lot worse, people circa 2030 will continue to twist themselves into pretzels to explain why exploding rents have nothing to do with homelessness while we eventually end up with Great Depression level homeless populations. I hope something is done, but this is America, so I doubt anything will.

18. I think it will be infinitely worse as we as a country aren’t doing the things to curb not only the drug use by providing the right kind of helps and by also doing basically nothing to stem the flow of drugs into this country. That combined with the skyrocketing cost of housing that is never going back to an affordable price. Until concrete action is taken instead of putting band sids on the situation to claim they are addressing it just for attention leaves the homeless problem to do nothing but get worse exponentially every day.

19. Homelessness isn’t really up over historical levels. What is up is less availability of transitional housing (which gets counted as homeless in most metrics).

    It would be nice to see a renewed focus on transitional housing *especially* drug treatment and sober living transitional housing.

    Precious few people can go from truly on the street living to just being handed a studio apartment and have good outcomes. There’s often an underlying reason they were on the street that doesn’t get better just by having a fixed address.

    Structured transitional living can be very effective. Chucking people in flop houses just invites disaster for a huge segment of the homeless.

20. They’re probably gonna clean up a little here in LA considering that the World Cup and the Olympics will be held here within the next five years.

21. It will be worst.

22. The homelessness problem is going to increase if nothing is done about runaway rent and housing prices

23. You ever see Newsies? I think that’s what homelessness will look like in 2030. No more overdosing in the park, no more pooping on the side walk. Nope.

    We’re about to see the singing, frolicking, choreographed-dancing side of homelessness.