Here’s a quote from a recent report by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), titled: “All in: A Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness”
It is clear that homelessness leads to poor health. The average American life expectancy is 77 years, yet only 50 people experience homelessness. Many chronic conditions are more common among homeless people (see chart below).
Additionally, homelessness exacerbates racial disparities, as homelessness is more prevalent among Latinos, especially African Americans.
One of the leading causes of homelessness is “rent is too fucking highIt should come as no surprise that some of the most expensive housing markets have the largest number of homeless people. In fact, the largest homeless population in the United States is where I live, Los Angeles.
What is the solution? USICH has many solutions. They first declare:
…housing should be seen as a human right, and housing is health care
It’s a useful sound clip, but what does it mean? How much housing is a human right? Obviously, living in a mansion is not a human right. So a key question is what level of housing will be secured.
In addition, some of the policies advocated by USICH can have both positive and negative impacts on housing. For example, the report discusses tenant rights and the possibility of using a moratorium on evictions during COVID. At first glance, this may seem like a positive development in reducing homelessness. In the short term, tenant protections will reduce homelessness because it will be harder for landlords to evict tenants. On the other hand, these regulations may increase rents. For example, suppose a tenant doesn’t pay rent or destroys the property. In these cases, it will be harder for landlords to evict them. Landlords are therefore likely to increase rents based on these tenant terms in order to maintain their return on investment. If rents go up, so does chronic homelessness. Thus, tenant protections may have an intuitive effect of increasing homelessness. My guess is that at first homelessness will decrease as tenant protection increases, but beyond a certain point the price landlords pay for overprotecting tenants will lead to higher rents and more homelessness Returnees.
While solutions to homelessness are challenging to implement, we all agree that homelessness is a major problem and addressing it will significantly improve the health of Americans today.
