Rents over the last two decades have risen much faster than employee pay, contributing to an escalating homelessness crisis in the U.S.

A growing number of Americans are ending up homeless as soaring rents in recent years squeeze their budgets.

According to a Jan. 25 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, roughly 653,000 people reported experiencing homelessness in January of 2023, up roughly 12% from the same time a year prior and 48% from 2015. That marks the largest single-year increase in the country’s unhoused population on record, Harvard researchers said.

  • alienanimals@lemmy.world
    44·
    1 year ago

    Corporate landlords are using price-fixing software to illegally raise prices and gouge average Americans. Executives need to go to jail for robbing us all.

  • _number8_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    42·
    1 year ago

    i paid rent this month the exact same as last month and they emailed me after a week saying i owed them $35 more. just out of nowhere, just because. yes it’s only 35 but also fuck off

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
    36·
    1 year ago

    But record low unemployment numbers guys! And wages made a tiny dent in decades of inflation!

  • lemmyviking@lemmy.worldEnglish
    34·
    1 year ago

    And…no one (people I know) believes me when I tell them who the homeless are. Every one just holds onto the concept that they are just mentally-ill people who need to be in an institution. When I explain that any person’s mental health decreases the longer they live without a home, a job, and a family for support. Homeless people end up turning to drugs because they can’t stand the fact that their ability has decreased so much that a drug-induced hallucination is better than reality.

    • thefloweracidic@lemmy.world
      72·
      1 year ago

      A number of homeless are indeed are victims of our terrible socio-economic system. However I have heard many homeless outreach workers say the same thing “The ones who stay homeless are the ones who stay addicted”. Addiction is a serious issue and the challenge of beating it is nothing we should dismiss, however it is clear some people end up homeless due to drugs and stay homeless due to a refusal to get clean. When your life is centered around just getting high, you won’t care much about anything else. All the horrors of living on the street disappear once you get your fix, and some people are okay living like that.

      I guess I’m writing all this to say that homelessness is a very complex and nuanced issue. They aren’t all victims, they aren’t all criminals, they aren’t all mentally ill, they aren’t all addicts, and for some its the only life they’ve ever known.

      This is why the conversation around homelessness is so difficult. People just latch onto their idea of what being homeless is then build their argument from there, dismissing the remaining context of the concept.

      I highly suggest doing homeless outreach to broaden your perspective on the matter (look up a local Food Not Bombs group if you live in a city!). If that isn’t something you’d like to do, there are plenty of videos on youtube that give you more insight into the homelessness experience. Obviously watch out for the videos that treat living on the streets as a spectacle or oddity, I absolutely hate these videos because they serve to shock and entertain, not educate.

  • BigMacHole@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year ago

    They should GET A JOB! And don’t you COMMIES tell me that Wages won’t cover a one room rental because that’s a LIE! I BOUGHT my house 30 years ago working as a JANITOR! Kids today are just LAZY! GIVE me my Social Security you COMMIES!