By Abha Bhattarai – The Washington Post
They are plumbers and casino supervisors, pizzeria managers and factory workers. They deliver groceries, sell eyeglasses and unload trucks at Amazon.
And they’re the new, unlikely face of homelessness: Working Americans with decent-paying jobs who simply can’t afford a place to live.
Homelessness, already at a record high last year, appears to be worsening among people with jobs, as housing becomes further out of reach for low-wage earners, according to shelter interviews and upticks in evictions and homelessness tallies around the country. The latest round of point-in-time counts – a tally of people without homes on one given night – show a discernible uptick in homelessness in many parts of the United States, including Southeast Texas (up 61 percent from a year ago), Rhode Island (up 35 percent) and northeast Tennessee (up 20 percent).
While there is no federal data on unhoused workers, shelter administrators and local groups report a spike in first-timers with jobs. In Tulsa, for example, where homelessness rose 26 percent this year, lack of affordable housing ranked as the top reason people said they were homeless, beating out mental health struggles or job loss.
“I work 50 hours a week, and it’s still really hard to keep up,” said Aaron Reed, 22, who makes $21 an hour at an Amazon warehouse near Nashville, and returns to his mother’s Hyundai SUV to sleep. He shares the back seat with their black Lab, Stella, while his mom sleeps up front.
Years of fast-rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing have created a situation where even a strong labor market and rising wages haven’t been enough to offset the financial strains of inflation.
“We are pushing working people into homelessness because they just can’t afford the rent,” said Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California at San Francisco. “The general public doesn’t see these folks as homeless – they’re not as visible as the people who occupy public spaces, who have substance abuse issues or mental health problems. But it’s a catastrophe, and it’s happening just under our eyes.”
While homelessness may not be a central issue in the upcoming presidential election, high housing costs continue to show up as a big reason Americans are frustrated with an otherwise strong economy. A recent CNN poll found that Americans pointed to housing costs as a top economic problem facing their families, ranking just after food prices but ahead of gas, health care, student loans and child care.
More cities and states, too, are citing homelessness as among their most pressing concerns. In California, where nearly 70 percent of people without homes live outside, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Thursday ordered officials to clear homeless encampments on state land, saying “it’s time to move with urgency.”
Among those who are homeless, inflation continues to play a major role. In interviews with 30 people in 17 states who recently became homeless while employed, nearly all said exorbitant rents had not only tipped them into homelessness, but were preventing them from securing new housing.
Deborah Bower, a dog groomer in San Ramon, Calif., has been homeless since October, after breast cancer treatments wiped out $100,000 of her savings. These days she either sleeps in her small SUV, which she parks in a movie theater parking lot, or in $95-a-night hotel rooms, where she often brings along her own dog, Bean, as well as others she’s watching overnight for clients.
“I’ve always been the one to help people, and now I’m the one who needs help,” said Bower, 60. “But I don’t want anyone to know I’m homeless. It’s embarrassing, like somehow I’ve failed society.”
Many who spoke with The Washington Post said they’re trapped in an impossible position – making too much money to qualify for food stamps and other types of government assistance, but not enough to secure housing.
All said they were working toward saving enough to cover first and last month’s rent, plus a security deposit, required by many rentals, but were hampered by everyday livings costs. Many also cited poor credit scores from evictions or unpaid bills as yet another hurdle to qualifying for housing.
Plus, everything costs more when you’re homeless, said Reed, the Amazon warehouse worker. He and his mother spend $50 a day to fill the gas tank, so they can leave the air conditioner running overnight in 99-degree weather. There’s no way to cook, so they eat prepackaged foods or takeout for every meal. And without access to running water, they spend about $80 a month on large jugs of bottled water they keep in the trunk.
“Every day, it’s like, ‘Which bills can we actually pay?’” said Reed, who works 11-hour shifts at the warehouse. “We’re behind on our car payments, then we’ve got gas, insurance, phones.”
The pair have been homeless since October, when Reed’s mother was hospitalized for covid and lost her job at a department store beauty counter, forcing them out of the extended-stay hotel where they’d been living for seven months.
A spokesman for Amazon said the company offers resources, including counseling, for employees facing homelessness and other hardships. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
A record 12.1 million Americans – or about 1 in 4 renters – are spending at least half of their incomes on rent and utilities, putting them at increased risk of eviction and homelessness, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Meanwhile, there is hardly anywhere in the country where a person working a full-time minimum-wage job can afford a one-bedroom rental, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
As a result, homelessness has picked up after an early-pandemic lull as rent moratoriums, stimulus checks and other government support dried up.
The rise in homelessness “is the unfortunate but predictable result of ongoing rent increases,” said Gregg Colburn, a professor at the University of Washington and author of “Homelessness is a Housing Problem.” “And now it’s happening not just in our big coastal cities, but all over the place – in Phoenix and Denver and Atlanta.”
Marie, a hotel and casino supervisor in Biloxi, Miss., who is being identified by her middle name because she fears losing her job, said her family was making do until their van’s transmission went out late last year. By the time they paid for repairs, they’d run out of money for rent, forcing them to leave their two-bedroom apartment for a patchwork of temporary arrangements. These days, she makes $900 every two weeks – and spends $710 of that on a hotel room she shares with her husband and 84-year-old father-in-law, who are both disabled. To save on gas, she takes a 90-minute bus ride to work instead of making the 20-minute drive herself.
“I am blessed to make $15 an hour but the cost of living is high, and $15 an hour barely covers rent and utilities,” said, Marie, 28. “With everything going up … we cannot save to even get a place to rent.”
Rents, which have risen more than 32 percent in four years, have recently started to stabilize, according to Zillow. That cool-down has been uneven. While some parts of the country have seen prices fall, rents have spiked by more than 30 percent in Clinton County, Ill., Brooke County, W.Va., and Franklin County, Tenn., according to real estate data firm CoStar Group.
Nelfreed McKay, 34, was spending about $1,200 a month, or nearly his entire monthly income, on rent before it got to be too much. Since May, he’s been sleeping in Central Park each night after finishing his shift as a server at a Manhattan bakery.
McKay, who makes $18.50 an hour, plus tips, is hoping to save up $5,000 by September so he can cover rent and deposits on a permanent room. He works overtime when he can and has been forgoing meals to save up. “There are times when you get so tired of it. You want to snack on something but it’s like, ‘No, I can’t afford that right now.’ I need to save up this money for what I really want: to sleep in a bed again.”
It is difficult to get an accurate snapshot of homelessness, especially when it involves people who may be staying with a friend, living in their car or patching together weekly motel rooms. Even so, the number of people without a home hit a record 653,100 last year, up 12 percent from the year before, according to federal data.
The Biden administration said it has taken sweeping measures to “end homelessness,” by allocating billions to emergency housing vouchers and rental assistance, and increasing the supply of affordable housing. But homelessness experts say it hasn’t been enough to make up for decades of failed policies and under-building of homes. The recent influx of migrants has also worsened the problem, they said, as has the spike in rental costs in the wake of the pandemic.
As a result, housing affordability and homelessness have become especially fraught issues in the run-up to the presidential election. The Supreme Court last month ruled that cities can ban people from sleeping outside in parks, streets and other public spaces, adding to a wave of rules criminalizing homelessness. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has vowed to go even further, by forbidding urban camping and creating “tent cities where the homeless can be relocated.”
But advocates on the ground said those rules can often backfire, making it even harder for people to get back on their feet. Instead, policies should focus on boosting rental assistance, revamping local zoning and land-use laws, and building more low-income housing, experts said. There should also be a larger push, they said, to keep people from losing their homes in the first place.
“High rents are the singular factor driving homelessness, so that’s what we need to address,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of San Francisco’s Coalition on Homelessness. “It’s pretty cost-efficient to give people a subsidy if they’re having trouble affording rent. If you don’t do that, that person becomes homeless and that’s much more expensive and inhumane to solve for, because now they’re also going through all of this extra trauma.”
Homeless workers who spoke to The Post detailed how they keep up appearances to keep their jobs, stashing their stuff in storage, showering at gyms, washing clothes at truck stops and buying movie tickets so they could rest in a dark, air-conditioned room a few hours at a time. It was imperative, they said, that their workplaces not know about their living situations because they worried about discrimination and job loss.
“If you saw me right now, you would think I was just some college kid with a backpack, walking to McDonald’s,” said Jordan Godlesky, who until recently made $25 an hour managing an ice cream shop in San Leandro, Calif., while sleeping outdoors. “There are so many of us who don’t fit into the box of what you’d think is homeless.”
But it was difficult to sustain, he said. He often left work at 10:30 p.m. – too late to access the area’s homeless shelters – and spent his nights walking around town because he worried for his safety. If he slept at all, it would be during the day, on a park bench. “Finally, the lack of sleep caught up with me,” Godlesky, 26, said. “I wasn’t able to physically handle it anymore.”
After too many absences at work, he lost his job a couple of weeks ago. Since then, he’s been to multiple interviews and is in the final stages for a store manager position at a cookie chain.
The job, which would pay about $28 an hour, would offer a steady paycheck, health insurance and stability. But what Godlesky is looking forward to most, for now, is having a bed to sleep in: The company’s two-week training program comes with free lodging.