The CDC’s eviction moratorium has ended. The cost of housing keeps going up. The prices of goods and services are rising due to inflation. For many, homelessness is coming for the holidays.
According to HUD data, more than 580,000 people are homeless on a single night in the US. 61% are in sheltered locations and 39% are in unsheltered locations. Rates of homelessness are higher among men and African Americans. Nationally, the number of homeless persons has increased in recent years, but Georgia has experienced a significant decline in homelessness over the past decade. Conversely, Georgia has high rates of rural homelessness and unsheltered veteran homelessness.
But, why does homelessness persists? Americans tend to think in individualistic terms, focusing on character, motivations, personality, or mental illness. As a sociologist, I strive to transcend individualism and examine how social institutions shape behavior. If one individual in a city is homeless, it’s likely the result of a personal failing. If many people in a city are homeless, there are structural conditions that cause homelessness.
Housing costs, poverty, and the economy impact rates of homelessness. Many people are priced out of the housing market by the high cost of homes or a lack of affordable options. Meanwhile, wages have stagnated since the 1970s. Many local economies do not provide enough careers with incomes that cover the costs of housing. Our modern economy offers many opportunities for part-time and service-industry work, but this work often pays less than a living wage and often does not provide health insurance. Poverty and reduced labor market participation increases one’s chances of homelessness.
Declining marriage rates and weakening of family bonds put individuals at risk of homelessness. Spouses, parents, grandparents, and adult children provide a social safety net that keeps people off the streets. Homelessness is often a direct result of lacking strong ties to relatives or a family of affinity.
The cost of medical care, a lack of emphasis on preventative medicine, and insufficient access to mental healthcare contribute to homelessness. 28 million Americans did not have health insurance at all in the past year. Many millions more had gaps in insurance coverage or were underinsured. In particular, deficient access to counseling, mental healthcare, or addiction treatment services perpetuates chronic homelessness.
The criminal justice system contributes to homelessness. Anti-vagrancy laws and similar statutes criminalize homelessness in many communities. Homeless people who have run-ins with the law develop criminal records that create a barrier to employment, resulting in a cycle of homelessness.
Low quality education increases rates of homelessness. Our schools offer deficient health, drug, and personal finance education. In the U.S., 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. are functionally illiterate. Many Americans lack basic quantitative reasoning skills. Those who attend low quality schools or fail to graduate are at heightened risk of poverty and homelessness.
Other structural conditions play a role, such as underfunded public health departments, inadequate support programs for veterans, political alienation, ineffective drug interdiction efforts, and weak government responses to climate change. Taken together, these are some of the manifold institutional causes of homelessness.
Sociology challenges us to transcend individualistic explanations of behavior. Personal troubles can lead to homelessness, but these are often symptomatic of institutional conditions. For example, an individual may experience homelessness due to a substance abuse disorder. Americans tend to think about this as a personal problem, but addiction is also a product of deficient health education, underfunded public health, failed drug interdiction efforts, and poor access to mental healthcare.
If we ever hope to end homelessness, it’s essential to transcend individualism and identify the manifold institutional conditions that cause homelessness. This is a prerequisite to developing practical policy recommendations to mitigate homelessness.
Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia and an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.
Reg Murphy Center