In Brief:
- 45 percent of Americans have observed increased homelessness in their communities, according to a new poll.
- Respondents said they expect elected officials at all levels of government to do more to address the issue.
- Nationally, more people are experiencing homelessness than at any time since official counts began in 2007.
Most people believe that homelessness is solvable and expect elected officials at all levels of government to do more to address it.
That’s according to a new poll commissioned by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. The poll comes at a time of rising awareness and debate about housing and homelessness. More people are experiencing homelessness now than any other time since official counting began in 2007. The numbers of homeless people — some 650,000 on one night in January 2023, the time of the last official tally — have increased every year since 2016.
Meanwhile, states, cities and the federal government have been debating various solutions to homelessness and other problems associated with it. More cities and states have been loosening zoning restrictions to promote more housing development amid a broader affordability crisis, for example. At the same time there have been high-profile policing efforts in some places to clear informal encampments and clamp down on sleeping in public places. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this summer that the city of Grants Pass, Ore., had the right to enforce a ban on camping in public, which led to a wave of encampment clearings in the west.
“We felt like this was the time to really try and understand what the public is thinking about homelessness,” says Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “What we started to see just before the pandemic … was the discourse on homelessness [had] really shifted toward: This is the result of poor personal choices rather than the systemic issues that really are plaguing people who are at risk.”
The poll was conducted by the firm Morning Consult in May and June of this year. The firm surveyed 4,049 adults. Of the respondents, 39 percent identified as Democrats, 32 percent as Republicans, and 29 percent as independent. The margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points, according to the firm.
The poll shows public opinion about the causes of and solutions to homelessness evolving in significant ways, Oliva says. About as many people cite a lack of affordable housing as a primary cause of homelessness as substance abuse — 56 and 57 percent of survey respondents, respectively. Slightly more than half of respondents, 52 percent, cited both mental illness and inflation as key drivers of homelessness. While this is the first formal public opinion survey the Alliance has conducted, Oliva says the responses show a growing awareness of economic factors and a shift away from a broadly held belief that drug abuse, mental illness and personal decisions are the main causes of homelessness.
“It is really about these more systemic issues, specifically the lack of affordable housing,” Oliva says. “It’s nice to see that those narratives are no longer dominant and people then are looking for different solutions from their leaders.”
About 45 percent of respondents said they had observed an increase in homelessness in their own communities. But only 31 percent believed homelessness was a very serious problem in their community, versus 68 percent who believe it’s a very serious problem nationally.
Respondents were much more likely to say that homelessness could be solved at the local level than at the state or national levels. But paradoxically, they have higher expectations for action from state and federal officials than local ones. About 74 percent of respondents said they expected governors and members of Congress to do more on housing, versus 71 percent for city council members and 68 percent for mayors.
Most respondents, 54 percent, said that homelessness should be fought with “government policies that fund programs to provide shelter, services, and housing for people who are homeless.” Forty-seven percent said investments in mental health and substance abuse programs could help solve the issue, while only 14 percent said the same about law enforcement.
The Grants Pass case in the Supreme Court turned on whether cities could use police to enforce camping bans if they didn’t have enough housing to serve all their residents. Cities, including Grants Pass, argued that they should be allowed to use law enforcement to address encampments, while advocates, including the National Alliance to End Homelessness, argued that policing encampments effectively criminalizes homelessness when residents have no other place to go.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been at the forefront of state efforts to clear informal homeless encampments, saying they’re a danger to public health and safety. He directed California cities, where about a third of all homeless people in the U.S. live, to clear their encampments after the Supreme Court decision earlier this year.
“It’s time to move with urgency at the local level to clean up these sites to focus on public health and public safety,” Newsom said in July. “There are no longer any excuses.”
The National Alliance to End Homelessness advocates for a coordinated public response to homelessness, with policies that promote more affordable housing and support services for people experiencing homelessness. Oliva says the poll reflects an opportunity for officials to act on a growing public awareness of homelessness and the economic conditions that contribute to it.
“Investments need to come from the state and federal level but changes also have to happen at the local level,” Oliva says. “Locals are deciding whether to criminalize people experiencing homelessness. Locals are deciding what their zoning looks like. They’re thinking about how to partner with public housing authorities and homeless service providers and local faith communities. What this says to me, if I was an elected leader, is that the expectation is I’m going to solve this and play the role that is appropriate to my level of government but I have to coordinate with leaders in other levels of government.”
