A Short History · United States

America Didn't Always Have This Problem

How a 55-year housing shift helped create modern homelessness. Until the early 1980s, "homelessness" was barely in the American vocabulary at all.

By Step Up AVL · stepupavl.org

Then: 1970

+300,000

surplus of affordable rental homes

More low-cost rental units than low-income renter households.

~1 in 4

renters were cost-burdened

Homelessness existed, but it was episodic. It rose and fell with the economy.

What changed: 1973 to 1983

Four shifts over a decade left the country short of low-cost housing:

Federal housing moratorium (1973)

Nixon froze new approvals for subsidized housing for ~18 months.

Deinstitutionalization without follow-through

States released psychiatric patients, but the promised community mental-health system was never fully funded.

Loss of SRO housing

Single-room-occupancy units, the cheapest homes for poor single adults, were demolished or converted.

HUD budget cut by more than half

Federal budget authority for subsidized housing peaked at about $82B in 1978 (in constant dollars), and Congress cut it by more than half in the early 1980s.

The result: by one consistent measure, homelessness about doubled between 1984 and 1987. Two early estimates count different things and are not one series: HUD's first national estimate found 250,000 to 350,000 people homeless on an average night (1984); a broader Urban Institute count found 500,000 to 600,000 over one week in March 1987.

Now: 2024

7.2M

shortfall of rental homes affordable and available to the lowest-income renters

35 / 100

affordable homes available for every 100 extremely low-income renters

770,000+

people homeless on a single night in January 2024, a record count, up 18% in one year. The January 2025 count was 3% lower.

The swing, in one line

+300K

1970 surplus

▶ −7.2M

2024 deficit

A swing from a surplus to a shortfall of 7.2 million, counted two different ways, against a growing population.

Policy helped open this gap over 50 years.

Policy can help close it, too, which is why it can't be solved by police and jails alone.

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