The Housing Crisis: A Path Toward Homelessness
If someone were to ask you what was the most fundamental part of becoming homeless, what would you say? If you said the high cost of living, you would be right. Housing prices and rent costs have only been going in an upward direction, making living for most Americans a stressful venture. Unfortunately, COVID-19 only made it worse "It finds that in 2022, as rents spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, a record half of U.S. renters paid more than 30% of their income for rent and utilities" (Ludden, NPR).
So rent is expensive and buying a house is increasingly more unaffordable, but it's not that bad, right? Wrong. On top of those facts, there is a massive housing shortage. The cost to pay people to build houses, apartments and other living spaces is going up as well. Materials themselves are also becoming more costly. Land also isn't as readily available as it used to be. These factors make building thousands of new homes, including low-income housing, very difficult. The effects of this crisis will certainly hurt a lot of people "By 2025, 1.6 billion people are expected to be affected by the global housing shortage, according to the World Bank" (Masterson, World Economic Forum)". What does this mean? Unfortunately, many people will be pushed into homelessness next year.
To slow homelessness, living needs to be more affordable. A push needs to be made by our elected officials to build more low-income housing in order to make it a real option for more people. We need to do our part by electing these people and pushing policies to help those in poverty. Increasing affordable housing is the first step to solving homelessness. Keeping people in their homes keeps them from living on the streets.
References:
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/06/how-to-fix-global-housing-crisis/
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/25/1225957874/housing-unaffordable-for-record-half-all-u-s-renters-study-finds
No comments:
Post a Comment