Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Homelessness in the United States
Summary
In the United States, the number of homeless people varies from different federal government accounts. In 2014, approximately 1.5 million sheltered homeless people were counted. In 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated roughly 553,000 homeless people in the United States on a given night, or 0.17 percent of the population. Approximately 65 percent of people were sheltered in provided housing while 35 percent were unsheltered. Annual federal HUD reports contradict private state and local reports where homelessness is shown to have increased each year since 2014 across several major American cities, with 40 percent increases noted in 2017 and in 2019.
Historically, homelessness emerged as a national issue in the 1870s. Early homeless people lived in emerging urban cities, such as New York City. Into the 20th century, the Great Depression of the 1930s caused a substantial rise in unemployment and related social issues, distress, and homelessness. In 1990, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the homeless population of the country to be 228,621 (or 0.09% of the 248,709,873 enumerated in the 1990 U.S. census) which homelessness advocates criticized as an undercount. In the 21st century, the Great Recession of the late 2000s and the resulting economic stagnation and downturn have been major driving factors and contributors to rising homelessness rates.
The causes of homelessness are a combination or variation of socioeconomic, interpersonal, and individual factors. Interpersonal relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners, increased housing prices (high rent, high mortgages, lack of affordable housing), as well as eviction rates contribute to the state of homeless people. Although mental illness and addiction are risk factors associated with homelessness, a 2022 study found that differences in per capita homelessness rates across the country are not explained by varying rates of mental illness, drug addiction, or poverty, but rather by differences in the cost of housing.
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related publications (1)
Related concepts (12)
Homelessness
Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing. The general category includes many disparate situations, including: living on the streets, also known as sleeping rough (primary homelessness) moving between temporary shelters, including houses of friends, family, and emergency accommodation (secondary homelessness) living in private boarding houses without a private bathroom or security of tenure (tertiary homelessness) having no permanent house or place to live safely Internally Displaced Persons, persons compelled to leave their places of domicile, who remain as refugees within their country's borders The rights of people suffering from the devastating effects of homelessness also vary from country to country.
Skid row
A skid row, also called skid road, is an impoverished area, typically urban, in English-speaking North America whose inhabitants are mostly poor people "on the skids". This specifically refers to people who are poor or homeless, considered disreputable, downtrodden or forgotten by society. A skid row may be anything from an impoverished urban district to a red-light district to a gathering area for people experiencing homelessness or drug addiction.
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America and consisting of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations.