Homelessness Increased by 18 Percent in 2024 and More Americans Can’t Afford to Buy Houses
“a dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in several parts of the country”
Now that Joe Biden is on his way out the door, the media has rediscovered the issue of homelessness, which has increased significantly over the last year. Also, more people in the United States are unable to afford buying houses, which is an even bigger problem in some ways.
For decades, home ownership has been the backbone of the American economy. It’s crucial for Trump to address this issue.
The Associated Press reports:
US homelessness up 18% as affordable housing remains out of reach for many people
The United States saw an 18.1% increase in homelessness this year, a dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in several parts of the country, federal officials said Friday.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said federally required tallies taken across the country in January found that more than 770,000 people were counted as homeless — a number that misses some people and does not include those staying with friends or family because they do not have a place of their own.
That increase comes on top of a 12% increase in 2023, which HUD blamed on soaring rents and the end of pandemic assistance. The 2023 increase also was driven by people experiencing homelessness for the first time. The numbers overall represent 23 of every 10,000 people in the U.S., with Black people being overrepresented among the homeless population.
The border crisis has only made the problem worse.
Among the most concerning trends was a nearly 40% rise in family homelessness — one of the areas that was most affected by the arrival of migrants in big cities. Family homelessness more than doubled in 13 communities impacted by migrants including Denver, Chicago and New York City, according to HUD, while it rose less than 8% in the remaining 373 communities. Nearly 150,000 children experienced homelessness on a single night in 2024, reflecting a 33% jump from last year.
FOX News has more on this:
Migration had a particularly notable impact on family homelessness, which rose 39% from 2023 to 2024, according to the report. In the 13 communities that reported being affected by migration, family homelessness more than doubled.
In the remaining 373 communities, the rise in families experiencing homelessness was less than 8%, officials noted.
Rents have stabilized significantly since January 2024, with the HUD adding 435,000 new rental units in the first three quarters of 2024, according to the report.
The PIT count was conducted at the tail of significant increases in rental costs, “as a result of the pandemic and nearly decades of under-building of housing,” officials said. “Rents are flat or even down in many cities since January.”
What happened to all the media’s happy talk about Biden’s great economy?
What this also means is that a growing number of people are on the edge.
Yet, the Democrats were gaslighting us about the economy. https://t.co/5sBUWwkhVe
— Ama Boukman (@AmaBoukman1804) December 27, 2024
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The number of Americans who are homeless increased by 18% while the number of illegals being put up in nice hotels increased by more than 18%.
“Homelessness” is less about lack of homes and more about personal decisions and behavior.
Yes.
Someone needs to go downtown to a homeless encampment and pick out one, only one (I’m making it easy for them), who is a viable candidate to purchase a home.
Years ago I asked someplace for someone to show me one family that had a home and then the breadwinner lost the job and 2 months later they were on the street living in a borrowed tent. I am still waiting.
Indeed, until recently, not having a home was a consequence of being “homeless,” not a cause of it. The “homeless” were largely those for whom drugs, insanity, and alienation had become a way of life, and “providing homes” for such people was about as productive as providing aquarium space for bees.
But the thrust of this article suggests that the old dynamic may now be swamped by illegal aliens, whom the Biden clowns let in willy-nilly and then left to fend for themselves. They don’t have homes (here) because they never had them. It’s quite possible that the otherwise-honest ones could properly maintain a home if they had one. (Not saying it’s our duty to expend wealth and effort toward that, deportation is still the preferred solution.)
I was a small time landlord in Seattle from 1998 to 2003. After the 9/11 attacks, the economy went south for a while, and my tenant lost his job. I told him not to pay any rent until he was back on his feet. He and his wife were great tenants, and this act of civilization paid off not long afterwards.
There was an earthquake that damaged the house, and it was a problem getting it fixed. He had gotten back on his feet, and resumed paying rent and made up the months when he couldn’t pay. In return, they put up with the disruption from the repairs, and when they left, they helped screen the next applicants.
I am a strong believer in the “brotherhood of the civilized.” The civilized wear a mark that is visible to other civilized people. We find each other, and we help out. That’s how civilization endures.
Yes indeed, so much of what we take for granted in the West is what could be loosely termed as a ‘high trust social order’. It shows itself in stories like yours where we, as individuals not collectively, voluntary choose actions that we hope and/or expect will be repaid in the future. Many places in the West are losing the connectedness that comes from those voluntary exchanges aka ‘being neighborly’. Once the trust is lost that social order breaks down and is restricted to family and very close friends.
The news is full of horror stories, and always has been. It’s worthwhile to remember that most people are the other way around. People who perform those acts of grace don’t get noticed too often, and most of them wouldn’t want to be.
The homeless would be another example. I wrote elsewhere in this thread about “CATO” and how I have often been generous to the out of luck. I won’t go into the details on this because I find it unseemly to mention my personal charity. I did it here because I was in a rare mood, plus I am anonymous.
In Seattle, before it was so overrun with the CATs, I went far out of the way for a guy in my neighborhood who was living in his car. It caught the attention of the local newspaper, and I agreed to talk to them about it only if the details were sparing and they mentioned me by name far down in the story.
I can be as hard-hearted a bastard as anyone, but occasionally a ray of light makes its way through the deflector shields. I think that’s true with a lot of people. Trust me, this doesn’t mean that I somehow approve of the crap that has mushroomed in the last 15 or so years. My “solution” to the tent camps would make the average liberal think quite badly of me.
But still, there are times when I call forth my aspirations to membership in the brotherhood of the civilized and do things for the down and out. Folks, these people have always been with us and always will be. When I read this or that bit of virtue signaling from this or that liberal, or outlandish judgments from this or that wingnut, I might reply: “So what have YOU done for any strangers? Tell me: what?”
So forget the politics from time to time. I will never be confused with a Bible thumper of any sort, but still: Treat others as you would want to be treated, especially if they are in trouble. You must remember this: The brotherhood of the civilized is very much one to one, and it’s why we are all still here. Sermon ended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-HLxpWGCzc
Oh, and if you are ever in need of help in this country, take it from someone with 500,000 road trip miles in all 50 states: Hope you are in Eastern Oregon. I’ve had my ass saved out there a few times, and have seen others get saved by strangers out there. It is far and away the most civilized region in this country I love with every cell in my body.
Agreed. My precondition for offering any assistance is that person is doing their own level best to get out of the hole they find themselves in. I am willing to provide a rope and help pull them up as they make a good faith effort to climb out. All I ask is they do the same for someone in the future.
True charity is person to person… not collectivized through NGOs or heaven forbid, confiscated at the point of a government gun by the IRS and redistributed to recipients of dubious qualification.
I do support removing regulations so more homes can be built affordably, stop bringing in illegals who only drive up rents for the most vulnerable, and most importantly for the “homeless” drug treatment for our addicted citizens, and prison and mental hospitals for repeat violent offenders.
It’s an endless cycle, drugs , loss of job, rehab, drugs again, homelessness
We keep throwing good money after bad
But the illegals took the safety net some of these people were hanging onto, and they were throw to the street by Biden/harris without a thought
I worked rehab for 30 years on and off. The alcoholics didn’t like to be housed with the druggies
They are a different breed and really 90% come in because they ran out of drugs and don’t want to go into detox without some pharmaceutical help.
At one time AA didn’t accept druggies, they do now, but, again, a different breed
If Americans don’t stop drugging themselves, nothing will change
Loss of the family unit, absent fathers, no religion…
Recipe for the disaster that America has become
Without America, the drug cartels wouldn’t exist as we now them
Can’t afford means has a better use for the money, like drugs.
Build more homes? It sounds simple but maybe it’s not. They need to talk to local governments about zoning laws in residential areas. If the locals don’t want it, it’s not happening, and that’s the way it should be.
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They need to talk to a lot of the blue States about some of the impossibly expensive requirements they have for new construction. For example, requiring solar on all new homes.
ln the Pacific NW, the uniform landlord and tenant act, which was simple, balanced, and clear, has been replaced by a variety of rules: no tenant screening, rent control, eviction moratoriums, pay moving costs if you don’t renew the lease, city government funds tenants’ lawyers, intrusive inspections.
All of these drive up costs. One-third of all landlords are small timers. They usually have the cheapest rents. Corporate landlords can easily comply with all those rules, but not the mom and pops. In many places, it’s easy to add an “accessory dwelling unit,” renovate a garage, or take in a basement tenant. But those rules actively disincentivize any of it.
Supply is thus limited. Rents go up. Liberals complain.
So many mixed messages. On the one hand, I hear that restrictive zoning laws are suppressing homebuilding. On the other, I see that every new proposal from a developer out our way is immediately burdened by the township with a requirement that x% of the units must be “affordable housing.” (I think this requirement percolates down somehow from DC.) So I wish I understood what it is that community governments actually think.
IMO we don’t seem to have starter homes available. Not new ones anyway. The older era starter homes are located in what would be politely termed ‘disadvantaged’ neighborhoods. Those that aren’t were either protected by forming HOA or community associations or have been gentrified into higher end housing. Some lack is due to shifting cultural preference for a bigger MCMansion as a status symbol, even for a younger couple. With very high rent in the available apartments and in some areas for rental homes offered up by larger companies a down payment is tougher to come up with. Especially when prices for existing homes is so high.
I am coming to believe that the younger generations, after Gen X are probably hosed. Just as the post WWII era through early ’70s was a boom cycle of high and nearly universal prosperity, the current era is being revealed as one of stagnation and inflation with far less prosperity for average people.
The price of land is the big driver in home prices. If “starter houses” were smaller, it wouldn’t make much difference in the aggregate. Now that I’m talking about this, an observation about those so-called “tiny houses.”
When I had a house built 7 years ago, we thought about getting into the B&B biz sans the breakfasts, and I did the deep dive. Those “tiny houses” (not talking about ones on wheels, which are glorified RVs) are a hipster affectation. They are hideously expensive per sft, and often badly built. Many are nothing more than architecture school projects that aren’t available anyway.
We quickly came to our senses on the B&B front. We actually laughed about why we’d ever thought of it to begin with. What, get 20 acres in the countryside only to screw around with our peace and quiet? How stupid was that idea, anyway? But I did investigate, and determined that there was only one — count ’em — one outfit that made any sense other than a mobile home, which the snob hipster snobs find way too plebian.
Thinking of something like that? Look no further than these guys.
https://archedcabins.com/
Yeah, when I lived in Seattle (thankfully, no more) they put those requirements in. I laughed at what they called “affordable.” And then they turned around and imposed a series of bullshit rules on landlords, including the small timers, that drove costs up.
Iron Law: “You can always tell a ‘progressive,’ but you can never tell a ‘progressive’ a single god damned thing.”
Small landlords, a) own one-third of the total units, b) usually have the cheapest rents, and c) often have a great, unrecognized ability to expand the rental housing stock. Just try telling the “progressives” any of that.
When is someone going to put an actual number on that “affordable” home?
There is a longstanding rule of thumb: Affordable monthly rent is one week’s gross pay. Typical mortgage standards limit the monthly payment including taxes and insurance to 35% of gross income.
Home prices have increased dramatically. Lots of factors as to how and why. Those who bought a home even as few as 10 years ago have seen huge increase in valuation and pay a dramatically lower mortgage rate/price. IMO, these folks sometimes lose perspective on these points.
Median Home price (US) at end of Presidential Admin:
Jan ’93 G Bush – $100K
Jan ’01 Clinton – $140K
Jan ’09 ‘W”Bush -$186K
Jan ’17 Obama – $225K
As of September ’24 median price was $418K. These increases tend to lock lower wage buyers out b/c they can’t afford the down payment. Add the big up tick in mortgage rates and the actual monthly cost is simply unaffordable for the average person in the middle class. Rates on a 30 yr were less than 6% from ’09 until ’23 and much of that time less than 5% and often less than 4%. That means more renters chasing apartments or homes to rent/lease which drove rental prices up significantly.
This has impacts far outside housing market. Folks delay marriage and child bearing b/c they can’t yet afford the place.they want to raise their children. That drives down the # of births and eventually this drives a demographic decline. In turn fewer births means less students and and less workers. That has big ramifications for govt; less schools, less teachers. Those without school age children or the childless are less supportive of taxes for schools. Then there’s the huge drop in the ratio of workers to retirees and the impact on SSA benefits.
CATO: Crazy, Addicted, Transient, Out of Luck.
I am personally generous to the Out of Luck. I bake bread for my local food bank, and 90% of the produce from my two large gardens goes there. The rest? Nope.
The millenials in Portland get annoyed when I point out how their love of the illegals is responsible for their rent going up 10-15% every year. Something to do with supply and demand. They are all supporters of Bernies ‘free shit grows on trees” outlook on life. They are proof that facts are incompatible with feelings. The problem with the blue cities is that none of the leaders have ever spent time on a farm, so they don’t understand the first rule: if you don’t want rats, stop feeding them. Speaking of which, Portland now has a severe rat problem. I didn’t see any back in the late 90’s and now I see at least one daily. I guess we need more coyotes in the city to do the dirty work, except they seem to like cats more.
As I mentioned last week, the Progs in Oregon have decided to double down on their stupid to oppose any changes that Trump is trying to make, and which the sane parts of the country support. Pretty soon .gov will be the largest landlord in most blue cities. Only a matter of time before all of those abandoned office buildings in the downtown areas go into tax default and are taken over.
https://oregonbusiness.com/menashe-buys-montgomery-park/
Lots of properties available at 20-30% of the pre-pandemic price. But if there are no tenants, then it is simply a mantenance and tax burden. They keep putting up new mixed use apt buildings and in 90% of the cases the ground floor business storefronts are unoccupied.
The county just spent $55M on a 96 unit building which they call affordable housing. Affordable to whom, I ask? The gaslighting in DC might have been turned down a bit, but it is full-on in the PacNW.
Oregon and WA State are going the way of Califuckyoustan. It’s terrible.
A long list of poor choices drive these problems. Coming from a crappy homes. Failure to take school seriously, leading to low paying jobs, failure to have job skills often coupled with having children before they are able to support them. At that point is very difficult to acquire job skills.
Buying a home at the limits of their credit, and abuse of available credit, which leaves little room for for recovery from setbacks.
For young people, maybe a tiny home, they can be moved, they are not travel trailers. These are suitable for singles, couples and maybe 1 or 2 small children. When a hurricane is coming, move it.
When considering jobs, look at cost of living. I had many companies in California try to hire me, When I looked real estate costs, commute times, I turned them down.
“(We will make sure that) You will own nothing and be happy.”
Let’s do some math. Estimate of illegal immigrants in the US three years ago was 11 million. Let’s call it 12 million now. Let’s say that Trump manages to deport 25% of them, or 3 million. Let’s assume that they are living in housing units of some sort or another at an occupancy rate of six per housing unit. So deportation would free up 500,000 housing units, more than enough for 770,000 so-called unhoused. And that’s before even dealing with drug addicted and mentally ill who need to be institutionalized one way or another and not just given an apartment. This is no doubt overly simplistic but it conservatively tells suggests there are enough housing units.
Before the automation of credit scores, almost all home mortgages were underwritten. Banks would sit down with the applicant and figure out if he/she had a reasonable shot of paying it off. Factoring in employment, income, expenses, possible cosigners, etc. From there the bank would decide whether to extend a mortgage, and for how much.
Now a computer looks at a number and sets limits and interest automatically. It’s faster and needs fewer paid staff. The problem is that credit scores aren’t a fully accurate measurement of fiscal responsibility. People who won’t live within their means yet just manage to keep up with their current bills can have high scores and get a mortgage that, despite the good interest rate, they have little chance of paying in full.
It doesn’t help that a lot of homes today are built or bought not to be lived in, but to be “flipped”. Every change of hands makes them pricier.
For the last 50 or 60 years, people have bought houses anticipating their resale value. As for flipping, if it were really that common, the 30-year mortgage would not be priced off of the 10-year Treasury with a spread of 2%-3%. Why the 10-year? Because the average holding period of a house or condo is 7 years, which is the duration (semi-annual coup0ns + return of principal) of the 10-year note.
You are inflating the frequency of flipping. Yes, it happens. Always has. But it’s the exception, not the norm.
Or the Clinton administration just orders banks to lend to them regardless of all that mathematical crap.
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