On a recent trip to New York, I stumbled upon a myriad of unhoused people along 42nd Street, in subway stations and in front of residential condominiums. This rampant housing crisis isn’t limited to the streets of New York — it’s happening everywhere.
The root causes of homelessness makes it nearly impossible to devise a holistic and multifaceted solution that can alleviate poverty altogether. The problem, however, is that many counties are fighting homeless people instead of working with them.
Proposed solutions remain unimplemented, while America becomes increasingly anti-homeless through hostile architecture, inequitable housing laws and the stigmatization of being unhoused.The solutions to homelessness, or the factors that often result in homelessness, are underfunded, and the general public lacks the will to implement them.
Anti-homeless architecture, formally known as hostile architecture, restricts certain groups from using public spaces. As documented by the Neighborhood Design Center, benches feature out-of-place armrests, spikes are added to planters and rocks are placed on turf, discouraging public use for both the general public and the unhoused.
In 2023, the Connecticut General Assembly proposed H.B. 6400, a bill prohibiting “the installation of hostile architecture in public spaces.” However, the bill failed to materialize as federal law, and hostile architectural elements remain an issue. This architecture serves as a deterrent for homeless people, but it also alienates the general public as benches become less comfortable and friendly to sit on.
Hostile architecture is merely a result of the stigmatization we’ve placed around homeless people, and it isn’t at all a new concept. The 1866 Vagrancy Act, initially used to arrest newly freed African Americans for loitering, is still enforced today to arrest or forcibly employ those who appear homeless. As a result, homeless people are punished by law rather than provided resources to improve their situation.
Homelessness is caused by numerous factors, including unaffordable housing, mental health issues, domestic violence and racial disparities. Instead of addressing these issues through laws and resources, lawmakers and public officials focus on the problem when people are already on the streets, because it is easier to arrest than alleviate.
While there are solutions to the homelessness crisis, they are not implemented because it is easier to throw the economically and mentally disadvantaged into holding cells than to provide them shelter.
Racial disparities are among the most entrenched contributors to homelessness. The 1866 Vagrancy Act was designed to arrest newly freed enslaved people, punishing them under the 13th Amendment. Combined with redlining and segregation — which persisted into the late 20th century — this created low investment Black neighborhoods, often less prosperous than other neighborhoods with majority white populations. Because of this, people of color, especially Black individuals, make up a disproportionate share of the homeless population.
Without affordable housing, the potential for economic growth among the homeless is capped, limited to whatever income can be earned on the streets. Many job applications require an address, but the lack of housing makes it difficult for many to reach a position where they can even make minimum wage.
Mental health crises alongside domestic violence may also result in an unfortunate and oppressive rabbit hole of poverty and homelessness. Over two-thirds of America’s homeless population is battling or has battled a mental illness, and 38% of domestic violence victims have experienced homelessness. Yet, instead of investing in resources to assist those experiencing mental health crises and domestic violence, healthcare companies are exercising corporate greed through denied claims and high rates, while domestic violence programs are experiencing funding cuts.
These factors aside, homelessness is still both stigmatized and normalized. In New York, I found that the man begging for change on the subway was met with indifference, not concern. In Los Angeles, I found that the woman sleeping on the side of the road with her dog in her lap was being stepped over instead of helped up.
Homeless people are not obstacles to your everyday life but an embodiment of everything wrong with our country’s approach to poverty and housing. Yet, they are still treated as less than human.
In November, a county in Utah showed up in large numbers to protest warming centers, short-term shelters that stop them from freezing in the cold winter months, for the homeless.
“The people that are coming to these homeless shelters do not want help,” a protestor said. “They’re drug addicts. They do horrific things. I have small children. This is not why we elected you.”
Such views on homelessness are vindictive and evil. Warming centers do nothing but help those in need, yet the dehumanization of unhoused people and the reduction of them to drug addicts and people who “do horrific things” is exactly what is wrong with the current approach to homelessness. The art of empathy is being lost in many of the American public.
Considering the factors that contribute to the homelessness crisis and the general public’s attitude toward unhoused individuals, solutions to this crisis should be clear and readily introduced at the next Congress session. However, the comfort of close-minded individuals who happily have a roof over their heads and food on their tables seems to come before those in need.
Domestic violence and mental health programs, affordable housing and civil rights efforts should all increase in funding to prevent more people from ending up in the streets. Warming shelters should be built despite outcry from the privileged. Unhoused people must be treated as a priority, not an obstacle.
Rebecca Do is an Opinion Intern for the fall 2024 quarter. She can be reached at dort@uci.edu.
Edited by Zahira Vasquez and Jaheem Conley.
