Housing First Doesn’t Work

In a classic attempt to bury embarrassing data, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released its most recent annual homelessness Point-in-Time Count report on a Friday, shortly before the Christmas break, about 11 months after the counting was done.

Try as it might, HUD is unable to hide the problem anymore because the increases are so high. HUD data now show more than 653,000 people experiencing “street-level” homelessness. Street-level homelessness rose 12% between 2022 and 2023, reaching the highest level ever reported since the Point-in-Time Count began, according to HUD’s report to Congress. If this rate continues, street-level homelessness will double in five to six years and approach 1.4 million people. In about a decade, the number of people experiencing street-level homelessness will be about 2.8 million, equal to the third most populated city in the nation.

In 2013, the Obama administration promised all homelessness would end no later than 2023, a decade after the formal adoption of the “Housing First” philosophy. With Housing First as the new official federal policy to address homelessness, HUD specifically said homelessness among veterans would end by 2015, chronic homelessness would end by 2016, family homelessness would end by 2020, and all types of homelessness would be gone by 2023. Progressive members of Congress and other advocates echoed these claims.

But homelessness did not end in 2023.