Homelessness has been a national issue in the United States since the 1870s, and now, it’s time to address it.

Major cities all around the U.S. have had major problems with homelessness. According to usnews.com, homelessness has skyrocketed 207% in Chicago from 2023 to 2024. New York City has the most homeless population with more than 140,000 people living on the streets without a roof over their heads. Even in Denver, Colorado, there was a 42% increase of homelessness from 2023 to 2024, with a homelessness population of over 14,000 people. Los Angeles also has the second highest homeless population in the U.S. at over 70,000. But according to Urban Institute, more than 75,000 are now homeless after the major wildfires that broke out in Los Angeles county.

But life in the U.S. wasn’t all about increasing homelessness. For a short period of time, the country almost had homelessness under control, and it wasn’t that long ago.

According to Performance Gov, in 2010, a federal strategic plan to end homelessness, called Opening Doors, was released under the Obama administration. There were four key goals to end the longtime national issue. The first was to prevent and end homelessness among veterans in a span of five years, aiming to end it at the end of 2015. The second was to prevent and end the chronic homelessness people suffer from in a span of seven years, aiming to end it at the end of 2017. The third was to prevent and end homelessness for families, youth and children in 10 years, and the final goal was to set a path to completely eliminate all types of homelessness, both aiming to end those by the beginning of 2021.

That all may seem like the U.S. had homelessness under control, and that the country was finally going to get rid of this longtime problem. But Security.org says otherwise.

According to Security.org, there were many key findings when looking at American homelessness. One key finding was that 653,104 people in the U.S. experienced homelessness, which was a record high tally, finding that the large number was a 12% increase from the previous year, 2022. Another key finding was that 111,620 of those 653,104 people were children. That means nearly 18% of these homeless people were children. Another key factor that was found was that homelessness increased in 41 out of the 50 states. It was also found that the top three states with the most homelessness percentage was New York, New Mexico and New Hampshire. As for the last key factor, New York and Los Angeles alone contained a whole quarter of the U.S. homeless population.

But rewind 11 years, and it seemed like the U.S. almost had homelessness under control. But then, it started to go up again.

Also according to Security.Org, the homelessness population in 2023 of 653,104 was the largest since 2012, when it slowly began to decrease, likely due to the Obama Administration plan, Opening Doors. The homeless population reached the lowest in 2016, at a total of 549,928 people. Since then, the homeless population slowly began to increase, taking a large increase in people from 2022 to 2023. According to Econofact.org, the homeless population took another large step in 2024, reaching a peak of 771,480 people, adding an additional 118,376 people in just one year. 

If the U.S. doesn’t do anything about this crisis, homelessness could get out of control. It was found by the School of Social Policy and Practice that the population of homeless people ranging 65 years old or older is projected to increase from 40,000 people to 106,000 by 2030.

Using this information listed in this article, it’s time for the government to address this national crisis. The U.S. can’t afford to let this problem of increasing homelessness get out of control.