By Emily Peiffer, Housing Matters, September 16, 2020
The pandemic’s devastating health and economic effects and the national reckoning around police brutality and systemic racism have highlighted pervasive inequities in communities across the US. A key issue lies directly at the intersection of those crises: homelessness.
The nearly 570,000 people experiencing homelessness (PDF) on any given night, especially the 210,000 people forced to live outside, face greater risks of exposure to the coronavirus. They are more likely to interact with the police and face citations, arrests, and incarceration. And, because of historical and systemic racism in housing, employment, and the criminal justice system, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people are significantly overrepresented in the homeless population (PDF).
Fundamentally, homelessness is the result of a nationwide lack of affordable housing, stemming from a severe shortage of federal investment in the affordable housing and rental assistance necessary to ensure everyone has access to a home they can afford, according to Sarah Gillespie, research director for the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute.
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