By Trish Thacker
November is National Homelessness Awareness Month, a time when organizations, individuals, and governmental entities bring greater attention to the issue of homelessness, as well as to the many misconceptions society has about people who are unhoused and the “why” and “how” behind homelessness.
At Guild, we don’t need an awareness month to remind us that homelessness is a complicated, multi-layered challenge. We see these layers firsthand every day when a new client walks through our doors looking for empowerment and support. Our team knows that each client’s experience is as unique as they are and that addressing homelessness must therefore be approached in equally unique and innovative ways.
In 2023, I attended a discussion led by Markus Klimenko and Mikkel Beckmann from Hennepin County’s Housing Stability Area, where they shared the impact that long-term disinvestment in housing, unequal lending practices, redlining, suburban flight, and other myriad influences have had in creating our current circumstances when it comes to unhoused populations in our communities. It was the best, most thorough discussion I’ve heard to date — with data, research, and trends dating back to the 1980s — and it showed me how dire the need is for more affordable housing, livable wages, and accessible lending practices, just to name a few.
A December 2023 report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development counted 653,104 Americans experiencing homelessness on a single night in January of last year. That figure was the highest since HUD began reporting on the issue to Congress in 2007. And the link between high housing costs and homelessness cannot be overstated; researchers from the state of Washington demonstrated that housing market conditions are definitively linked to homelessness. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, when median rents increase by $100, homelessness rates rise by 9 percent — and from 2001-2022, median rents increased 19 percent after adjusting for inflation.
Many organizations and advocates are talking about these same structural needs, issues, challenges and activities during National Homeless Awareness Month. And they are all extremely important. Here, however, I’d like to talk about people.
Let’s never forget that we are talking about people.
Let’s never forget that we are all just one small disaster away from homelessness.
People experiencing homelessness are someone’s parent, someone’s sibling, someone’s child, someone’s family member. They are valuable and worthy of love and belonging.
A professor of social work once told me that homelessness occurs when people run out of relationships. I’ve never forgotten this, and I believe that when we advocate for changes that makes housing possible for everyone, we re-engage the relationship.
At Guild, we work each day to re-engage those relationships. We provide permanent supportive housing services for people experiencing chronic and long-term homelessness, including people who have had difficulty maintaining housing, and individuals struggling with diagnosed mental illnesses. We help them find stable, affordable housing in their community of choice and then provide supportive services so they can remain in their residence, engage in their community, and reach their broader goals.
When we understand the structures that support homelessness and work to change them, homelessness becomes a “we” problem, not a “they” problem.
And maybe that’s what it should have been all along.