The Number of Homeless in the United States

Homeless refers to individuals and families without a permanent place to sleep. In the United States, people become homeless due to a variety of reasons. They may be unemployed, have a physical or mental illness, or be fleeing from domestic abuse. Regardless of the cause, people can quickly find themselves without a home and facing a range of challenges in getting back on their feet.

Homelessness has been a persistent problem in the United States since the Civil War, when industrialization and urbanization began to transform American cities. Increasing poverty levels led to the rise of tenements and slums, where people often lived in cramped conditions with low wages or government assistance. Jacob Riis, the muckraker and photojournalist, documented some of these conditions in his book, “Riders of the Purple Sage,” published in 1870. In addition, many people slip into homelessness as a result of natural disasters or other events beyond their control. For example, a hurricane or flood could leave a family without a place to stay, or a fire might destroy the only home an elderly person had left.

While the exact number of homeless is difficult to pin down, a substantial body of research on this issue has developed in recent decades. A significant portion of the research on homeless people has focused on urban areas, but a growing amount of work describes homelessness in suburban and rural communities as well. There is also a growing body of research on subpopulations within the general population of homeless people, including children and youths, individual adult women, seniors, those with disabilities, and those who have experienced multiple episodes of homelessness.

The most common way to measure the number of homeless people is through a point-in-time count, in which a specific date and time are used to determine how many people live in a community without a place to sleep that night. Most governments and some private organizations use these data to design programs that better meet the needs of homeless people.

Until recently, it was believed that homeless people consisted entirely of single adults who lived on the streets or in emergency shelters. However, the emergence of large numbers of children and youths in homelessness has challenged these assumptions. These youths may live in shelters or other forms of temporary housing, but they are also often living in parks or in vehicles, and in some cases are sleeping on the street. The overlapping issues that affect these groups, from poverty to education and child care to mental health and substance abuse, are complex, but they are all related.

Homelessness among children and youths is a significant challenge for local and state governments, as well as for the nation as a whole. To address this issue, a wide variety of solutions has been proposed, and some are beginning to show promise. These include educational initiatives like A Way Home America, which is building a national movement to end youth homelessness by 2020, and SchoolHouse Connection, an organization that believes that quality education can guide students experiencing homelessness to success in the classroom and in life.