Lisa Desjardins:
Welcome to the News Hour.
Homelessness in America reached record highs earlier this year. A government report released today reveals that last January, the number of people experiencing homelessness rose 18% to nearly 770,000 people, according to a single-night count.
The annual survey published by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development pointed to a list of worsening economic problems, high housing costs, and the influx of immigrants into some cities, including.
To understand more about the reasons behind this rise, I’m joined by Sean Donovan, CEO and President of Enterprise Community Partners and former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Sean, this is a striking report in many ways. It’s about where things stood earlier this year. I want to start with a particular dynamic, which is the role of the migrant crisis. How and where has this affected homelessness in this country?
SHAWN DONOVAN, FORMER US SECRETARY OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT: Well, Lisa, first of all, thank you for having me.
This is tragic news, the largest increase in homelessness we have ever seen since we started recording these numbers. And specifically to your question, there’s certainly no doubt that the rise in the number of immigrant families in the United States has contributed to that, especially in some of the places where we’ve seen the biggest increases, places like New York City or Massachusetts, Chicago, Denver.
But I think what’s really striking about these numbers is how broad the challenge is. We’ve seen 18 states reach record highs, including places like Kansas, Alaska, Utah, and places — Idaho is another — places where there’s not a large influx of immigrants.
And so there’s a much bigger story here about record levels of housing costs, both to own and to rent, higher than — someone like me, who’s been doing this for a long time for 30 years, I’ve never seen an affordable housing crisis this bad.
