The homeless of the US – where they live, how they live

Homeless people didn’t have an easy time in the US during the corona pandemic. They were more or less left to their own devices by the government. On the advice of health authorities, many larger cities almost completely stopped working in the so-called “homeless camps”. As a result, the situation in many places got out of hand and extreme poverty shifted sharply to the inner cities.

This frustrated local residents. They called on governments to act and were heard. In the past year, tent cities and homeless camps have been evacuated and dismantled in 65 US cities. Even in liberal metropolises like Seattle, Washington DC or Los Angeles.

Homeless organizations complained that such temporary measures further traumatized and vilified an already vulnerable group. Instead, they called for long-term solutions, such as creating housing and fighting poverty and drug addiction.

The rigorous measures have done little to help, according to the latest report from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Despite the forced evictions of numerous camps, the number of homeless people has risen slightly since 2020 – the report did not appear in 2021 due to the corona pandemic. According to the HUD, 582,462 “homeless people” were living in the US at the end of 2022. That is about 2000 (one percent) more than two years ago.

The curve of those chronically affected by homelessness even shows a marked upward trend. These are people who have been homeless for more than a year or more in the past three years.

The major centers are particularly affected. About 52 percent of the homeless live in a large city, only 18 percent in rural areas. Portland is a particularly negative example: Ever since Oregon decriminalized possession of small amounts of any drug by referendum in 2020, rows of addicts have flocked to the state's largest metropolis. Downtown and public parks were virtually overrun by homeless people. Meanwhile, the drug liberalization experiment is believed to have largely failed.

The homeless situation is particularly tense, not only in Oregon, but also in the other states on the US Pacific coast. With 171,521, nearly 30 percent of all "homeless" people in the US live in California alone. This means that there are almost 44 homeless people for every 10,000 inhabitants. In addition to Oregon, Vermont, Hawaii, New York and Washington also have a similarly high percentage.

Just over 60 percent of all homeless people in the US are men and the proportion is just over 38 percent women. Striking: Almost 100,000 of all "Homeless" are under 18 years old. However, few of them live permanently on the streets. Most of them spend the night with their families in a sheltered emergency or temporary shelter and are therefore considered “sheltered homeless”. In any case, 'only' 28 percent of all homeless people in the US live entirely on the street.

When it comes to ethnicity, it is striking that the proportion of black homeless people around is significantly higher compared to the total population. 37 percent of all "homeless" people are of African American background, while only 14 percent of all Americans belong to this group. With whites it is exactly the other way around. They make up nearly 60 percent of the total population, but they only make up about 50 percent of the homeless.

The problem of homeless veterans seems to have decreased somewhat in recent years. While there are currently 33,219 war returnees living on the streets, their number has more than halved since the early 2010s. Veterans are still twice as likely to be homeless as civilians. Currently, only 5.7 percent of all homeless people are former military.