Ron Dudley, 47, had a shock at the beginning of the pandemic. Overnight, everything was shut down and no one else came to talk to him or buy the newspaper he sells on the streets of Washington. “People didn’t want to get close. They were afraid of contaminating themselves.”
He has been homeless in Washington for six years. He currently sleeps in a shelter and, during the day, sells the Street Sense newspaper, part of a project to help homeless people in the 14th Street region — one of the busiest in the downtown area, but which today has several facades. empty.
“This here was as busy as New York. After the pandemic, people left. Many restaurants closed, and several apartments are empty”, comments Dudley, on the sidewalk of 14th Street, on a sunny morning and few pedestrians. “I don’t think it will ever go back to the way it was.”
As in Washington, many American cities are still struggling to cope with falling traffic in downtown areas. Part of the offices remains empty after the adoption of remote work, and those who moved from the metropolis face difficulties to return, since the price of real estate has risen a lot in the last two years in the country, especially in the big cities.
These two issues — the lack of people on the streets and the high cost of housing — impact American homeless people. Homeless people often rely on support networks in the areas where they live. Residents and workers who see them in the same place every day often help with money, food or small jobs. On the other hand, the rise in house prices means that more people are at risk of going to live on the streets and makes it difficult for those who are in this situation to get out of it.
“It is very difficult to rent an apartment. They ask for too many things to prove income, and the prices are very high”, says Dudley. “In the shelter, I have a bed, a shower, but my biggest dream is to one day get the key to a place that I own. It’s difficult.”
The profile of homeless Americans varies. Many of them roam the cities during the day, carrying their things in wheeled suitcases or supermarket trolleys. In Washington, it is common to see them in public spaces such as libraries, cafes and McDonald’s units.
When walking through the streets, one often hears the request “Do you have some change?” (Do you have any change?). There are also more complex approaches, such as well-dressed people who start conversations on the streets by paying a compliment or asking for information, and then asking for some money for food or to top up the money for the bus ticket.
There are currently no accurate figures on the total number of homeless people in the US. The figure had been growing year after year since 2017, according to data from USICH, an agency that conducts surveys on this topic for the US government. In January 2020, there were 580,000 people.
With the pandemic, many cities stopped counting, for fear that this would increase the risk of contagion. The most recent USICH report, with data from 2021, only took into account the total number of people in shelters: 326,000. The document points out, however, that many of the places have reduced their capacity during the pandemic to expand social distancing at the expense of reducing vacancies.
With no vacancies in the shelters, there was an increase in tents spread across streets and squares in cities like Los Angeles and Washington. In the capital, there are several squares taken over by huts. They stay for weeks in the same place, until, suddenly, they are taken away. A few weeks later, part of them return or new temporary residents appear.
Some of the squares occupied by tents have chemical toilets and drinking fountains. Volunteers and entities serve free meals daily. Life in tents, however, is even more difficult in a country with extreme temperatures, with heat exceeding 38°C in summer and snow in winter.
Big US cities vary the way they handle tents. In Los Angeles, City Hall led by Democrat Eric Garcetti allows large areas near downtown to be occupied. Management has been postponing for months the completion of a census of the homeless population. In 2020, before the pandemic, there were 66,000 homeless people in the city.
In New York, Mayor Eric Adams, also a Democrat, took a hard line to reduce the presence of homeless people in downtown areas and on the subway.
“Adams is very focused on bringing people and businesses back to the central districts. In these areas, research shows that company employees don’t feel safe. And so he set out to remove people’s camps and get them off the streets. “, points out Matthew Murphy, executive director of the Furman Center, a center for housing research at New York University.
On the other hand, Adams has invested in expanding shelter options, including a new model that seeks to be a compromise between temporary shelter and permanent housing, where homeless people can spend longer periods in places maintained by churches and entities. with help from the municipality.
As of mid-August, New York City had 53,000 people sleeping in shelters each night, according to data from the City Limits project, which compiles data from multiple shelters. In January, there were 46 thousand. California and New York are the states with the highest number of homeless people in the country.
Both researcher Murphy and Dudley, who lives in a shelter, believe that the main way to resolve the issue is to expand the supply of available homes and access to them. “In New York, the housing vacancy rate is less than 1%. In the city, there are practically no houses available for people who can only pay up to $1,500 a month. than that, but has his whole life tied to New York City?” asks Murphy.
In the coming months, the risk of recession could make the problem worse, as a cooling economy would cut jobs and household incomes, which will find it more difficult to pay the bills.
“It’s common for evictees to end up in a homeless shelter,” Murphy points out. “Many sectors of the economy still haven’t recovered, and there’s the question of how a recession will affect people’s ability to pay rent.”
“You could take these abandoned places and make space for people who can’t afford to stay in them,” Dudley suggests, pointing to empty buildings on 14th Street. “But I can’t complain about the government. [ex-presidente] Donald Trump. Stimulus checks arrived when I needed them. But I want one day to get the key to a door that is mine, to a place that I have rented. It’s my big dream.”
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
