Homelessness in the US persists due to a worsening housing shortage, rising housing costs, increased immigration levels, and the expiration of eviction protections. Jeff Olivet, head of Biden’s US Interagency Council on Homelessness, sees homelessness as a policy choice and highlights its solvability when collective action is taken.

The surge in New York City's homeless population, exacerbated by the expiration of pandemic-related measures, poses a critical challenge, with numbers reaching unprecedented levels. Christine Quinn urges upholding the "right to shelter," faster transitions to permanent housing for cost savings, and collaboration to address the multifaceted crisis.

OPINION COMMENTARY:

To combat the homeless crisis in America, bureaucratic obstacles that hinder those in need must be overcome. Harvard ALI Fellows Melinda Giovengo and Betsy Schwartz critically examine HUD's Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act and showcase how the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston, Texas has successfully implemented a multi-stakeholder approach.

HEALTH & HOMELESSNESS SERIES:

The Biden Administration’s plan to reduce homelessness by 25% by 2025 is focused on preventing homelessness before it occurs in the first place. Jeff Olivet, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, discusses how they are urgently addressing basic needs of people in crisis, and expanding housing and support to help people get and stay housed.

HEALTH & HOMELESSNESS SERIES:

Many think mental illness leads to homelessness, but a bidirectional relationship exists, and homelessness can lead to mental illness as well. Katherine Koh, MD, a practicing psychiatrist at the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program and Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses how her innovative practice of street psychiatry supports our unhoused neighbors.

HEALTH & HOMELESSNESS SERIES:

Inside Safe, Los Angeles’s program to reduce homelessness, recently achieved its ambitious goal of housing 1,000 people in its first 100 days. Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum, CEO of Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, discusses the nature of the challenge, the approach, and the city’s early progress.

OPINION COMMENTARY:

Bob Levey provides a personal perspective on how individual institutions and organizations must also wrestle with the complex problem of homelessness within their own communities.

OPINION COMMENTARY:

We see them in most major cities: tents in our neighborhoods, tarps on our sidewalks, and encampments in our parks. We see garbage piling up. Feces in doorways. Teresa Mosqueda and Sally Bagshaw emphasize, however, that inside the tents, there are people trying to survive.

Facing consistently overcrowded facilities, Joe Finn discusses how shelter providers recognized that they had an impossible choice: should they deny shelter to individuals in need, subjecting them to the risks associated with cold weather exposure, or continue to allow them into shelters where they would be susceptible to COVID-19, a quickly spreading and often deadly virus?