The homeless population in the United States surged by 18% in 2024, the largest annual increase since the Department of Housing and Urban Development started collecting data in 2007. Worse, the number of homeless families increased by 39%, also a record. Although the HUD report released in December tries to hide it, President Joe Biden is entirely to blame.
The “key findings” of the report identify “rising inflation,” “stagnating wages,” and “systemic racism” as the causes for the surge in homelessness, and it is true that inflation has made everything, including housing, more expensive. However, in any other context, the Biden administration has been bragging about rising, not stagnating, wages, and in the past year, wages have actually outgrown inflation — but not for Biden’s entire term.
In other words, inflation and wages are getting better, not worse, so they can’t be the real cause of the homelessness boom. There is no evidence in the report that the U.S. became substantially more racist in 2024 than it was in 2023, so we can throw that explanation out the door, too.
What is not mentioned in the “key findings” but is mentioned in some of the state-level reporting is the role of migrants in adding to the homelessness numbers. In Illinois, for example, the report admits that “new arrivals (which included migrant and asylum-seeking families, including those bused or flown to Chicago from other states) accounted for more than 13,600 people in emergency shelters in 2024.” In Massachusetts, the increase was attributed to “hundreds of recently arrived migrant families, refugees, and asylum-seekers who did not yet have living arrangements coming to the state.”
The timing of the report’s counting further demonstrates the role migrants played in boosting last year’s homelessness numbers. The annual HUD report comes from a homeless headcount taken on a single day in January of last year, which came after a record high of 301,981 migrants encountered crossing the southern border the month before. While border encounters have since fallen, thanks to a secret deal with Mexico, January of this year would have been the absolute height of communities across the country trying to find housing for the record number of illegal immigrants Biden allowed to enter the country through the southern border.
It should also be noted, however, that Republican-controlled states managed to absorb migrants much better than Democratic states. According to HUD data, Texas’s homeless population only grew 8.2% over the last five years, while California’s grew by 23.6%. There are several reasons why Texas is better at controlling homelessness than California, but perhaps the biggest is Texas’s ability to build new housing. According to the latest census numbers, Texas permitted more than 232,000 residential units in 2024 compared to just 117,000 in California.
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Looking forward, all states now have more power to reduce homeless populations thanks to the Supreme Court’s City of Grants Pass v. Johnson decision, which overturned a 9th Circuit holding that essentially created an Eighth Amendment right to vagrancy. Now, localities are free to use both sticks and carrots when trying to get homeless people to accept treatment and services without federal judges second-guessing their every move.
The steps toward ending the Biden homelessness boom are clear. First, seal the border so additional migrants stop adding unnecessary strain to our housing needs. Second, pass permitting reform so builders can start building more houses. Third, encourage localities to use their new police powers to force homeless people off the streets and into treatment centers.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
