Ending Homelessness and Housing Rights.

Right now, there are an estimated 18.9 million vacant homes in the US and roughly 3.5 US residents (including a large population of children and youth) have been homeless for a significant period of time. Put those two things together and there are far more vacant homes than people experiencing homelessness in the US. There are so many ways to prevent homelessness before it even happens, including stopping evictions as Mark D. Levine and Mary Brosnahan wrote about:


And that’s the thing – as a tenant renting a place, you have rights including how much of a notice your landlord is required to give before entering and the landlord selling the property does not automatically end the lease. Organizations like Washington Law Help and the Department of Housing and Urban Planning have resources to help explain your rights as a tenant. And there are also organizations around the country that can help with legal problems if you don’t have a lot of resources or are low income.

There are solutions to ending chronic homelessness and Utah found an obvious one: provide housing for those who are homeless. Simple fix right? Because with this solution and the significant proportion of vacant homes around the country, Utah decreased its chronic homeless population by 91% in ten years. And if all of that doesn’t sell you, there have been estimates saying that this program has actually saved the state close to $12,000 each year per person and helps underlying issues.

Another solution is providing living wages so people don’t struggle with coming up with rent money each month. The best solution though would be the destruction of the current status quo and system that allows for people to be homeless in the first place. The system in play now benefits from high rent and mortgages because the higher the monthly payment on housing, the more money landlords and banks can make.

There are so many other things to consider with these issues – like how chronic homelessness is only a small population of the total homeless and how solutions like inhumane spikes to deter sleeping on the street and criminalizing people who are homeless don’t actually accomplish anything. We need long term solutions that help to address multiple things and the root issues at hand.