New study highlights worsening homeless crisis in California

A new report on adult homelessness in the populous US state of California has unveiled that residents in poor health, trauma and deep poverty are most vulnerable to losing their homes.

The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness further reveals that 50 percent of all unsheltered people across the US – who may or may not have a car to sleep in – live in California, with 90 percent citing housing costs as the main reason of becoming homeless.

"The results of the study confirm that far too many Californians experience homelessness because they cannot afford housing," wrote Director of Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California in San Francisco and a principal investigator of the study, Margot Kushel, following the release of the new survey on Tuesday.

The fact that the state's sky rocketing housing costs are a major factor in homelessness is not groundbreaking news, she further noted, emphasizing that  “people are homeless because their rent is too high. And their options are too few. And they have no cushion.”

According to the study, more than 20 percent of those who signed rental contracts cited income losses or reductions as the primary reason for losing their homes.

“So it wasn’t so much that their housing costs increased, it’s that they could no longer keep up with it,” Kushel underlined.

This is while African Americans made up of 26 percent of the homeless population in a state where they are only six percent of the general population, raising an alarm on then hidden factor of racism in the state, as is evident in the rest of the United States.

The study also found more that 30 percent of the adults surveyed met the chronic homelessness threshold, meaning they had a disabling condition and were homeless for at least 1 year — or were homeless four times in the previous three years totaling more than 12 months.

Nearly half of the homeless taking part in the survey reported an inability to work due to age, health or disability.

The study encompasses findings from nearly 3,200 surveys and 365 in depth interviews with adults experiencing homelessness across the state between October 2021 and November 2022.

It is the "largest representative study of homelessness in the United States since the mid-1990s," according to the study, which was requested by California Governor Gavin Newsom.

The survey also found that many people cannot afford homes in the state. Nearly all people surveyed reported that they "face barriers" such as poor credit history, discrimination, health challenges or prior evictions, when trying to rent or purchase a home.

More than one million people experience homelessness in the United States in a given year and many more are at risk of losing their homes, according to the Biden administration, though the actual figure is widely believe to be considerably higher.

Florida, New York and Washington also had high rates of homelessness last year, the Annual Homeless Assessment Report demonstrates as mentioned in local press reports. 

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