Homelessness

Federal rules use the word homeless, and they define it in four categories at 24 CFR 578.3. Many people and many organizations prefer unhoused. Our own recommendation Lead Me Home describes people living unhoused in cities across the West Coast. The word changes, the federal definition does not.

The Housing Choice Voucher program is, in HUD's own words, the federal government's major program for providing housing assistance to over 2.3 million American families.

HUD estimates it every year. Fair Market Rents are estimates of 40th percentile gross rents for standard quality units within a metropolitan area or nonmetropolitan county. They set the payment standards for the Housing Choice Voucher program, rent ceilings for HOME and Emergency Solutions Grants, and maximum award amounts for Continuum of Care recipients. HUD posts them at least 30 days before they take effect, normally on October 1.

By 7.2 million homes. That is the National Low Income Housing Coalition's count of rental homes affordable and available to renters with extremely low incomes, meaning at or below the federal poverty guideline or 30% of area median income, whichever is greater. Only 35 such homes exist for every 100 households that need one.

Nevada has the fewest, at 16 affordable and available homes per 100 extremely low-income renter households. South Dakota has the most, at 73. No state has an adequate supply. In 13 of the 50 largest metropolitan areas the shortage passes 100,000 homes on its own.

Most of them, in every state the National Low Income Housing Coalition measured. Among extremely low-income renter households the severe cost burden share is 82% in Arizona and Florida, 79% in California and 70% in Alabama.

Matthew Desmond. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in The American City won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. The Princeton sociologist, named a MacArthur Genius, follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. It also took the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal.

The Eviction Lab points people to justshelter.org for community and nationwide resources. The Lab itself publishes an Eviction Tracking System, a National Eviction Map and eviction rankings, so you can see what is happening where you live.

Furniture or money, and your Saturday. Humble Design takes both, and it runs move-in days that need volunteers. A company can sponsor a whole home through a day of service. Details sit at humbledesign.org.

HUD describes it as permanent housing where housing assistance and supportive services together help households with at least one member who has a disability achieve housing stability. That member can be an adult or a child. Who qualifies follows the criteria in that year's funding notice, which may require chronic homelessness.

HUD describes it as permanent housing that provides short-term rental assistance, up to three months, and medium-term assistance of four to twenty four months, along with supportive services. Case management runs at least monthly and can continue for up to six months after the rent help stops. The household holds a one year lease whatever the length of assistance.

HUD defines a chronically homeless person as a homeless individual with a disability, as defined in the McKinney-Vento Assistance Act, who lives in a place not meant for human habitation, a safe haven, or an emergency shelter. That person must have been homeless and living that way for at least 12 months, or on at least 4 separate occasions in the last 3 years that add up to 12 months, with each break at least 7 consecutive nights.

HUD lists four. Literally homeless. Imminent risk of homelessness. Homeless under other federal statutes. Fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence. Only projects serving people defined as chronically homeless have to document chronic status for HUD.

Once a year, on a single night in January, communities run a Point-in-Time count. The January 2025 count found 745,652 people homeless across the country. HUD publishes it in the Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress, alongside a Housing Inventory Count of the beds available.

HUD states it plainly. Point-in-Time counts do not include people living in taxpayer-funded housing assistance for the homeless. Counting those people as well brings the January 2025 figure to 1,456,923.

Both, depending on the window. The January 2025 count was a 3% decrease since 2024. Measured against 2013 it is a 27% increase. HUD chose 2013 as its baseline because that is when Housing First policy changes began inside its homelessness programs.

On a single night in January 2025, 266,320 people were living unsheltered. That is up 36% since 2013, a steeper rise than homelessness overall.

Worse, by the federal count. Chronic homelessness increased 81% between 2013 and 2025. Over the same years, taxpayer funded beds increased 151% and Continuum of Care spending increased 111%.

Housing First is the policy approach HUD adopted in its homelessness programs from around 2013. In 2026 the department turned against it. Secretary Scott Turner said the status quo of Housing First has failed to meaningfully reduce homelessness, resulting in crisis levels of people living on the streets, and that HUD is restoring its programs to advance recovery and self-sufficiency. That is the department's stated position.

Start with who already does it near you. Humble Design works in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland and San Diego. It began in Detroit in 2009 when Treger Strasberg found out a friend and her children were sleeping on the floor of an unfurnished home, so she collected furniture from her own house and her neighbors' until the place was full.