Homelessness is Not Where the Heart Is

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Because the Statistics Are Heartless

By J. Jeff Toler for Shenandoah Christian Alliance j.toler@sca4christ.org

“For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land’” —Deuteronomy 15:11

If you have ever worked or lived in a big city, you know the issue of America’s homeless population has been a shoulder-shrugging topic for generations. When it gets up close and personal though, it’s hard to ignore.

In my much younger days, I usually worked the swing-shift at the Herald Examiner—Los Angeles’ other newspaper. (Yes, that was actually the slogan they used when competing against the Los Angeles Times.)

I remember one time I took the morning shift for a vacationing co-worker, and arrived to work well before the crack of dawn. Entering by the back door, I encountered a drunk fast asleep. That may have been the moment I determined that this job was not likely to develop into a long-term relationship with me much longer.

The newspaper was housed on the corner of 11^th and Broadway in downtown L.A. in a wonderful mission-style building. The “Her-Ex” published both a morning and afternoon edition before declining readership forced it to become the only afternoon paper. The ten year-old strike ended my last day on the job. The paper shut down in November of 1989.

The derelict inebriate I stepped over that morning was sleeping it off in the only warm shelter he managed to find. To say he had no home to go to would have been an understatement.

Homelessness is defined as a lack of stable, safe, and adequate housing, or the means to obtain it. The definition of homelessness can include:

1. Living in a place not meant for habitation, and includes sleeping in a hallway, bus station, library, or car.

2. Living in a temporary shelter. This includes living in a congregate shelter, transitional housing, or a hotel paid for by the government or some charitable organization.

3. Homelessness can mean Living with someone else. This includes living in the home of another person temporarily, or living with a parent or guardian. This definition might include a semi-permanent situation if the person is a recent college graduate.

4. Fleeing domestic violence. This includes fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, or other dangerous conditions.

5. Having no lease or ownership interest in a permanent domicile. This includes families or unaccompanied youth who have not had a lease or ownership interest in a housing unit in the last 60 days.

6. Having moved multiple times. This includes families or unaccompanied youth who have moved two or more times in the last 60 days.

7. Being likely to lose housing. This includes individuals who are likely to lose their housing within two weeks.

There is another scenario that is accounting for an increased number of homeless people—the not necessarily in-tact families who were hustled into the US by an immigration “system” that encouraged migrants—illegal aliens—to enter the country across an open border.

Haley Strack, National Review

As a result, “Homelessness in the United States rose 18.1 percent this year, according to newly released data from the Department for Housing and Urban Development. Federal authorities counted 770,000 people as homeless across the country, the highest recorded number,” writes Haley Strack for National Review on December 27.

If that number seems small in comparison to the wildly varying estimates of migrants entering the country illegally the last four years, you must remember these figures are based on the data collected just since 2023, and may not include the millions who were already released to families who are not always their relatives. (refer to reason number 3) This situation is a big factor in any serious discussion on homelessness.

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As would be expected, the homeless crisis is having the greatest impact on the most vulnerable: children.

Among America’s undocumented—an excepted euphemism for illegal migrants, there are one million children under 18i and 4.4 million under 30ii living in America out of the estimated total of 11.1 million undocumented immigrants.iii

The figures don’t begin to describe how being undocumented affects children brought into this country. In the video, “Undocumented Americans,” [https://www.apa.org/topics/immigration-refugees/undocumented-video] three undocumented youth recount the issues they face.

The Feds are boasting of the reported drop in illegal migration following Biden’s Presidential Proclamation 10773, designed to temporarily suspend and limit the entry of certain noncitizens at the southern border. The proclamation only took effect June 5, 2024. Too little, too late?

The high number of encounters were straining the US immigration system, so both Departments of Homeland Security and Department of Justice issued an interim final rule limiting asylum eligibility, further enhancing intervention and accountability at the border.

Some places are worse than others, but not necessarily because of proximity to the border. Understandably, California has the highest number of homeless counted: 187,084, while New York comes in at second place with 158,019 people. This was a jump of 53% from 2023 to 2024.

But California’s stats appear to be as much a matter of a political shell game than a responsible program for dealing with the homeless.

Jack Crowe, also writing for National Review reports, “The State of California has allocated $24 billion over the past five years to address homelessness, but no one is quite sure how that vast sum of taxpayer money has been spent or whether it’s making any difference.”

He continues, “The State lacks current information on the ongoing costs and outcomes of its homelessness programs, because Cal ICH [the California Interagency Council on Homelessness] has not consistently tracked and evaluated the State’s efforts to prevent and end homelessness,” state auditor Grant Parks wrote in his introduction to the revealing report.

To put it in perspective, since 2019, California has spent a little less than the entire GDP of the Republic of Georgia. Yet, homelessness in the state has only gotten worse. Roughly 30% of the US’s entire homeless population is now unhoused in California.

A common misconception with many is that substance abuse is the leading cause of homelessness, but The National Coalition for the Homeless emphasizes that many people turn to drug use only after experiencing homelessness. [https://nationalhomeless.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Substance-Abuse-and-Homelessness.pdf]

Compared with the heated controversy of H-1B visas, human trafficking, drug smuggling, and open borders, America’s melting pot resembles more of a chamber pot. Fixing the mess will not be easy or without a lot of pain. But it is big problem that will only worsen for every American over time.

Churches and denominational missions, as well as rescue missions all across America should have both the means and incentive to participate, if not lead in the efforts to work on bringing measurable results and real change to this issue.