While unemployment continues to sink in the Trump era, homelessness has soared, particularly among young people.
According to research from the University of Chicago, about 1 in 10 young adults ages 18 to 25 experience some form of homelessness in a year. While those who haven’t completed high school face the greatest risk of becoming homeless, nearly 30 percent of young adults who experienced homelessness were enrolled in college or another educational program at the time that they experienced homelessness.
The phenomenon transformed into a major political issue in major urban centers during the election in November, fueled by headlines of used needles and human feces littering the streets.
This crisis has coincided with millennials’ coming of age. The surge in underemployed, overeducated millennials has contributed to a surge in rents and shed light on the housing shortage. Millennials took on tens of thousands of dollars in student debt only to find that the job market did not align with their credentials, leaving many underemployed and unemployed. Meanwhile, the shortage of trades among millennials has also inflated construction costs, limiting the construction of new housing. The National Low Income Housing Coalition reports that the U.S. has a “shortage of 7.2 million rental homes affordable and available to extremely low income renters.”
[Also read: Surprise: Millennials are workaholics who can’t unplug on vacation]
In San Francisco, 18- to 24-year-olds now make up one of the fastest-growing homeless populations. That could be why San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved a tax on large businesses to fund housing and homelessness services. Two years ago, Los Angeles tried to address its own homeless issue by passing a $1.2 billion bond to build thousands of homes for the homeless.
These efforts lend some assistance to those in need. However, Dennis Culhane, a homelessness expert at the University of Pennsylvania, notes that “little pilot efforts here and there are not going to make a dent” on this nationwide crisis. He believes it would take a “massive infusion of resources” to address millennial homelessness, which could otherwise endure for several decades.
Affordable housing and homelessness are difficult issues that the government have never effectively solved in this country—and cannot expect to solve through costly, taxpayer-funded programs.
Politicians will never effectively “cure homelessness” in their own state, as transients are “transient” by nature and will migrate to wherever conditions are best. Outside of providing the mental and physical care for our country’s most vulnerable, governments should find their place in matching millennials with the training they need to sustain themselves in the current job market before they completely give up hope on the economy and commit themselves to a life on the streets.
Brendan Pringle (@BrendanPringle) is writer from California. He is a National Journalism Center graduate and formerly served as a development officer for Young America’s Foundation at the Reagan Ranch.
