Biden plan aims to cut homeless rate 25%

With levels of unhoused increasing across U.S., president committed to ‘Housing First’ policy

President Joe Biden released a plan Monday to reduce homelessness in the United States by 25 percent in the next two years.

The 100-plus-page plan, which officials said includes input from communities around the country and feedback from hundreds of unhoused people, comes as homelessness in the nation reaches crisis levels. New York’s mayor last week announced plans to force unhoused mentally ill people into treatment, while the mayor of Los Angeles has declared a state of emergency.

Released through the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the plan details that homelessness is rising after “steady declines” from 2010 to 2016. More than 1.2 million people experienced “sheltered homelessness” in 2020, the most recent year data was available.

By another measure, more than 580,000 people were homeless on a single night in January 2022, when the Department of Housing and Urban Development performed its annual “point-in-time count” — a method some advocates say underrepresents the number of unhoused people.

The plan set out how the administration would combat homelessness by battling racial inequity, encouraging the construction of affordable housing, facilitating communication between federal and local governments and preventing homelessness in the first place.

In a statement included in the plan, Biden said it “will put us on the path to meeting my long-term vision of preventing and ending homelessness in America.”

The plan said homeless people are wrongly blamed for their situation. Instead, systematic failures — including economic inequality and racial discrimination — have created a country where “in no state can a person working fulltime at the federal minimum wage afford a two-bedroom apartment at the fair market rent.”

The plan offered a sweeping, if sometimes vague, path to creating that safety net. The administration committed itself to “Housing First” — the idea people should be housed before underlying problems such as addiction or mental illness are addressed.