What Public Systems And Supports Can Address The Needs Of People Experiencing Homelessness

Many different local, state and federal public systems and services intersect with homelessness in important ways. 

Nearly 1 in 8 Californians did not have enough resources to meet their basic needs, according to the most recent California Poverty Measure data. This reflects the high cost of living in many parts of the state. In addition, the share in poverty is expected to increase for 2022, as pandemic-era public supports like the expanded federal Child Tax Credit expired. For all individuals experiencing homelessness, public supports that help people meet basic needs are important both to prevent and exit homelessness. These supports include but are not limited to: cash supports like SSI/SSP and CalWORKs, refundable tax credits like earned income tax credits (EITCs) and child tax credits, nutrition assistance programs like CalFresh and WIC, and Medi-Cal health coverage.

While only a minority of unhoused individuals struggle with serious mental health or substance use disorders, behavioral health services are vital supports for maintaining stable housing over the long term for those individuals. Among youth, abusive or neglectful family situations can cause young people to leave their homes and become homeless, pointing to a role for the child welfare system in preventing and addressing youth homelessness.

Domestic violence can also be the trigger that pushes individuals into homelessness, especially women and mothers with children. Services that directly address the experiences and needs of domestic violence survivors are important to prevent and address homelessness for these individuals.

The justice system has an impact on many unhoused individuals as well. This is both because of laws that criminalize homelessness (e.g., laws that make public camping punishable by citation or arrest) and because individuals who have a conviction record or are reentering the community after incarceration face daunting barriers to securing and maintaining stable housing. These factors compound challenges in helping individuals find safe, affordable housing. Source

What Are The Key Drivers Of Homelessness In California?

Many systemic challenges rooted in classism, racism, and sexism that harm individuals and families put people at greater risk of becoming homeless at some point in their lifetime.

The severe shortage of affordable housing — particularly housing that is affordable to people with the lowest incomes — is the number-one driver of California’s homelessness crisis. For Californians with the very lowest incomes — those categorized as “extremely low-income” under the definition used for most state and federal housing policies — there were only 23 housing units that were affordable and available for every 100 renter households as of 2020. Statewide, an estimated 1.2 million new affordable homes are needed by 2030 to meet the housing needs of Californians with low incomes.

Because affordable housing is in such short supply in California, many renters with low incomes must pay much more than they can afford for housing, so that even a minor financial emergency can cause them to be unable to cover the rent and face the risk of eviction and homelessness. Black and Latinx renters are especially likely to face unaffordable housing costs, reflecting the effects of explicitly and implicitly racist policies and practices in housing, employment, and other arenas.

Other factors have also contributed to California’s homelessness crisis, including the decades-long trend of stagnant wages for lower-wage workers and past failure to fund adequate mental and behavioral health services to meet needs in the community. The shortage of deeply affordable housing, however, is a fundamental driver of the crisis. Source

Where Do People Experience Homelessness?

In efforts to understand and end homelessness, location matters in various ways, including:

1) People experiencing homelessness are increasingly concentrated in cities.

Solving the affordable housing crisis in the nation’s major cities, including ensuring that urban areas have enough deeply affordable housing and emergency housing resources, would significantly reduce homelessness. In 2007, 51 percent of people experiencing homelessness were concentrated in urban areas. In 2023, 59 percent of people experiencing homelessness lived in urban areas.

2) Solving challenges in a few states would significantly reduce homelessness.

Just seven states (California, New York, Florida, Washington, Texas, Oregon, and Massachusetts) account for 63 percent of people experiencing homelessness.

25 Continuums of Care (CoCs), spanning both metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas, account for nearly 49 percent of all people experiencing homelessness. Between 2022 and 2023, homelessness increased the most in these same states and CoCs.

In part, the fact that these regions account for an increasingly large share of the nation’s homeless population is tied to the large overall populations in these states. California’s overall population of people experiencing homelessness increased 5.8 percent in 2023. This is less than half of the average 12.1 percent increase in the national population of people experiencing homelessness. However, due to California’s size, the increased population count was large: 9,878 people.

3) Some smaller states have large numbers relative to their populations.

From 2022 to 2023, homelessness in New Hampshire and New Mexico increased by more than 50 percent. Vermont, Maine, Montana, Colorado, and Alaska have very high rates of people experiencing homelessness compared to their relatively small populations. It is important to ensure that federal resources reach all locations that are uniquely struggling to end homelessness, even if they have small homeless populations. All people experiencing homelessness must have access to assistance regardless of where they live. Source

Why Do People Experience Homelessness?

Housing

There are currently two major contributors to the housing and homelessness crises: a lack of low cost housing nationwide and the limited scale of housing assistance programs.

Nationally, the cost of rental housing greatly exceeds wages earned by low-income renter households. For example, a full-time worker needs to earn on average $25.82 per hour to afford a modest two-bedroom rental and $21.21 hourly to afford a one-bedroom (National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2022). However, the national minimum wage is only $7.25!

Housing isn’t only out of reach for minimum wage earners. The 2022 housing wage is far higher than the median hourly rate earned by customer service workers ($17.75), nursing assistants ($14.57), maintenance and repair workers ($20.76), home health aides ($14.15), retail workers ($14.03), and many others in the workforce.

Poverty

Homelessness and poverty are inextricably linked. Poor people are frequently unable to pay for housing, food, childcare, health care, and education. Difficult choices must be made when limited resources cover only some of these necessities. Often it is housing, which absorbs a high proportion of income that must be dropped. If you are poor, you are essentially an illness, an accident, or a paycheck away from living on the streets.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the national poverty rate in 2016 was 12.7%. There were 40.6 million people in poverty. While the poverty rate has been slowly declining since 2014, a couple of factors account for continuing poverty:

• Lack of Employment Opportunities – With unemployment rates remaining high, jobs are hard to find in the current economy. Even if people can find work, this does not automatically provide an escape from poverty.

• Decline in Available Public Assistance – The declining value and availability of public assistance is another source of increasing poverty and homelessness and many families leaving welfare struggle to get medical care, food, and housing as a result of loss of benefits, low wages, and unstable employment. Additionally, most states have not replaced the old welfare system with an alternative that enables families and individuals to obtain above-poverty employment and to sustain themselves when work is not available or possible.

Other major factors, which can contribute to homelessness, include:

• Lack of Affordable Health Care – For families and individuals struggling to pay the rent, a serious illness or disability can start a downward spiral into homelessness, beginning with a lost job, depletion of savings to pay for care, and eventual eviction.

• Domestic Violence – Battered women who live in poverty are often forced to choose between abusive relationships and homelessness. In addition, 50% of the cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors identified domestic violence as a primary cause of homelessness (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2005).

• Mental Illness – Approximately 16% of the single adult homeless population suffers from some form of severe and persistent mental illness (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2005).

• Addiction – The relationship between addiction and homelessness is complex and controversial. Many people who are addicted to alcohol and drugs never become homeless, but people who are poor and addicted are clearly at increased risk of homelessness. Source

Homelessness and Racial Disparities

Most minority groups, especially African Americans and Indigenous people, experience homelessness at higher rates than Whites, largely due to long-standing historical and structural racism.

The most striking disparity can be found among African Americans, who represent 13 percent of the general population but account for 37 percent of people experiencing homelessness and more than 50 percent of homeless families with children. This imbalance has not improved over time.

What Are the Causes?

From slavery to segregation, African Americans have been systemically denied rights and socioeconomic opportunities. Other minority groups, including Indigenous and Latinx people, share similar histories. The disproportionality in homelessness is a by-product of systemic inequity: the lingering effects of racism continue to perpetuate disparities in critical areas that impact rates of homelessness.

Poverty

Poverty, and particularly deep poverty, is a strong predictor of homelessness. Black and Latinx groups are overrepresented in poverty relative to their representation in the overall population, and are most likely to live in deep poverty, with rates of 10.8% and 7.6% percent, respectively.

Segregation/Rental Housing Discrimination

Redlining – systemic housing discrimination supported by the federal government decades ago –  is a root cause of the current wealth gap between White households and households of color. Redlining discouraged economic investment, such as mortgage and business loans, in Black and Brown neighborhoods. 

The effects are still with us today: African Americans still live disproportionately in concentrated poverty or in neighborhoods where they are regularly exposed to environmental toxins, and have limited access to quality care, services, nutritious food and economic opportunities. People that become homeless are likely to have lived in these types of neighborhoods. 

For most minority groups, the transition to neighborhoods with less crime, no environmental hazards, and close proximity to services, are often met with challenges. A study by the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on racial discrimination found that people of color were often shown fewer rental units and denied more leases in comparison to White people. White people, on the other hand, were frequently offered lower rents. Deposits and other move-in costs were also quoted as “negotiable,” making it easier for White people to secure units.

Incarceration

The racial disparity in incarceration rates has continuously worsened. The rate for African Americans has tripled between 1968 and 2016 and is more than six times the rate of White incarceration. These racial disparities are no accident. Black and Brown people are at far greater risk of being targeted, profiled and arrested for minor offenses, especially in high poverty areas. 

The implications of over criminalization are far-reaching: A criminal history can keep people from successfully passing background checks to secure both housing and employment. People exiting jails and prisons often face significant problems in accessing safe and affordable housing and their rate of homelessness is high.

Access to Quality Health Care

People of color are far more likely to lack health insurance than White people, especially in states without Medicaid expansion. Even with expansion, overall about 30 million people are uninsured, with about half of them being people of color.

The lack of health insurance for people with chronic medical conditions and/or untreated serious mental illness can place them at risk of becoming homeless or being precariously housed. For example, people with mental health disabilities are vastly overrepresented in the population of people who experience homelessness. Of the more than 653,000 people in America who experienced homelessness on a given night in 2023, nearly 1 in 5 had a behavioral health issue. While the rate of serious mental illness may not vary by race, studies show African Americans have more difficulty accessing treatment.

Any effort to end homelessness in the United States must address the range of issues that have resulted from racial inequity. This includes assuring affordable, stable housing for all. Systems, programs, and individuals that serve people experiencing homelessness should monitor their outcomes in order to eliminate disparities in the way that they provide services.

Source

The Psychological Impact of Reintegration: Understanding the Long-Term Effects of Service

 

Reintegration is the process by which veterans transition from military to civilian life. This encompasses adjusting to family life, entering the civilian workforce, and adapting to a non-military social environment. For many veterans, this transition involves not only practical but also profound emotional and psychological adjustments.

Psychological Effects of Military Service

The psychological toll of military service extends beyond the battlefield, affecting various aspects of veterans’ lives in profound ways:

• Heightened Risk for Mental Health Disorders: Beyond PTSD, veterans are at increased risk for conditions such as Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), driven by the high-stress environments and traumatic experiences encountered during service.
• Impact on Family Relationships: The psychological effects of military service can extend to family dynamics, often straining relationships through behavioral changes and emotional withdrawal by the veteran.
• Long-Term Health Consequences: Chronic stress and mental health issues can lead to long-term physical health problems, including cardiovascular disease and a weakened immune system, complicating a veteran’s health well beyond their service years.

Difficulties in Reintegration

The reintegration of veterans into civilian life presents a spectrum of challenges that can hinder their adjustment and well-being:

• Cultural Disconnection: Veterans may struggle with feeling disconnected from civilian cultural norms and practices, making social integration challenging.
• Identity Crisis: Moving from a highly structured military identity to a civilian one can create a crisis of identity for many veterans, complicating their sense of purpose and self-worth.
• Barriers to Employment: While veteran unemployment rates have been steadily dropping, veterans often encounter difficulties in translating military skills to civilian job markets, and may face employer biases regarding mental health.

The Negative Effects of Military Service

The negative effects of military service are manifold and can profoundly impact veterans’ mental and social health in several critical ways:

• Increased Risk of Substance Abuse: High stress and coping with PTSD often lead veterans toward increased alcohol and drug use as a form of self-medication, further impacting their health and social reintegration.
• Social Isolation: The stigma associated with mental health issues and the warrior culture’s emphasis on toughness can lead veterans to isolate themselves, exacerbating feelings of loneliness and depression.
• Suicide Risk: The culmination of depression, isolation, and other mental health issues significantly contributes to a higher rate of suicide among veterans compared to the civilian population.

Veteran Reintegration Issues in the USA

Veteran reintegration issues in the USA encompass a range of socio-economic and healthcare challenges that require targeted interventions and support:

• Economic Impact: Veterans often face economic instability due to unemployment or underemployment, impacting their ability to secure housing and meet basic needs.
• Healthcare Access: While many veterans are eligible for VA healthcare, challenges in accessibility, service quality, and bureaucratic hurdles can impede their ability to receive adequate care.
• Community Integration Programs: The need for programs that facilitate community integration and understanding between veterans and civilian populations is crucial. Programs that educate employers about the value of skills acquired during military service and how they translate to civilian roles can aid in improving employment outcomes.
• Addressing these issues comprehensively requires coordinated efforts between governmental agencies, private organizations, and communities to create a supportive environment that acknowledges and adapts to the unique needs of returning veterans.

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SOLD OUT- Stand Up For Veterans Event

 

Thanks to all of you we have a sold out comedy show and dinner!!! We are looking forward to seeing everyone tonight at the event that could make it!