By Maddie Ellis
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (click here) identified 5,390 people experiencing homelessness in Chicago.
But in a new report released Tuesday, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless put forth a different count: 65,611.
The difference is largely due to the difficulty of counting the fluid homeless population and the definitions of homelessness used by federal agencies, definitions that some advocates say keep resources from some of the most vulnerable populations — children and families living doubled up, or temporarily staying with others.
HUD defines homelessness generally to mean staying in a shelter or a place not meant for human habitation, which excludes those living doubled up from its estimate. The agency conducts a point-in-time count of the number of individuals living in sheltered or unsheltered locations, usually occurring in January....
More than a decade (click here) after she and her two daughters were displaced by Hurricane Katrina, Sarah Davis returned to New Orleans. Sarah found a job answering phones for a hotel chain, but she didn’t make enough to cover a security deposit to rent a home. She and her teenage daughters were homeless, only able to rent a small house after a local charity chipped in to cover the initial costs. The family now has a home, but half of Sarah’s wages still go toward housing. To make the rent every month, Sarah and her daughters have to make sacrifices: no vacations, no trips to the movies, no new school uniforms. “I have a lot of guilt because I can’t provide for them the way that I want to,” Sarah said.
Sarah and her children are far from alone. Millions of American families like Sarah’s do not have access to affordable housing. The 2008 financial crisis set off a chain reaction that sparked a nationwide affordable housing crisis. The decimated housing market and subsequent foreclosures pushed millions of homeowners into the rental market; nine million new households entered the rental marketplace over the past decade. As more families sought rental housing, construction failed to keep pace with demand and what new units were built were mostly luxury units in big cities. Rents rose and fewer and fewer families could find adequate housing for a reasonable price. The problem of rising rents was exacerbated by the problem of stagnant working-class wages....
