by Daniel Johnson
December 14, 2023
The Biden administration’s goal of reducing homelessness by 25% by the year 2025 is being aided by its provision of federal funds to the State of California and certain cities to combat homelessness.
The latest figures from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) uncovered that in 2022, 582,000 people were homeless at some point last year. In addition to last year’s figures, in 2023, the agency helped 94,000 households either exit or avoid homelessness.
According to NBC News, those households were able to take advantage of public housing or vouchers or some combination of the two to avoid homelessness. According to HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, the organization has been working with communities to help keep people from becoming homeless, “HUD and our community partners have acted aggressively to end homelessness by working with communities to get people into housing and provide the resources necessary to help prevent people from ever becoming homeless.”
According to HUD, the figures for homelessness this year will not be available until 2024, but the numbers from 2022 align with those reported in 2020. HUD also noted that figures from 2021 were “considerably impacted” by the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization plans to provide more than $3 billion in funding for homeless service organizations. The Biden administration’s goal of reducing homelessness by 25% by 2025 is being aided by its provision of federal funds to the State of California and certain cities to combat homelessness.
In November 2023, The Associated Press reported that cities nationwide were cracking down on homeless encampments, sometimes called tent cities. Homeless advocates, as well as homeless people themselves, criticized the moves by various cities, characterizing them as both cruel and a waste of taxpayer resources. Scout Katovich, an attorney with the ACLU, which has filed lawsuits challenging the constitutional merits of sweeps and seizures in several cities, told the AP, “We are seeing an increase in these laws at the state and local level that criminalize homelessness, and it’s really a misguided reaction to this homelessness crisis.”
Katovich explained, “These laws and these practices of enforcement do nothing to actually alleviate the crisis, and instead, they keep people in this vicious cycle of poverty.”
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