Over 7,000 people were displaced by the wildfires in Maui one month ago. So far, nearly 80 families have been placed into housing, but many others are still waiting for placement. Families waiting for housing are living in hotels and overcrowded emergency shelters.
In the United States, roughly 51,000 families were experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2022. Family homelessness is a problem that will only get worse as climate change increases the frequency of natural disasters. This temporary experience of homelessness could affect their children’s housing stability for a lifetime.
People who experienced homelessness as a child are 2.5-8 times more likely to become homeless as an adult, even if the childhood episode was a short, one-time experience.
Some research suggested that homelessness also affects future generations. One study found that roughly half of homeless adults reported that their parents experienced homelessness. This illustrates the multi-generational patterns in homelessness and related housing insecurity.
Having worked in disaster preparedness in California for two years, I understand that there is a lag between the impact of a natural disaster and rehousing people who lost everything.
In this country, in the fight to end family homelessness, it is urgent to expand the funding for necessary resources, such as Housing Choice Vouchers and the supply of affordable housing, to benefit those currently experiencing homelessness as well as future generations.
Housing Choice Vouchers, also known as Section 8, are federally-funded rental subsidies for low-income individuals and families (those who make less than 50 percent the median income in an area). These flexible vouchers allow families to pay no more than 40 percent of their monthly adjusted gross income for rent and utilities, allowing them to afford more housing options than they may otherwise qualify for on the private market.
Research suggested the long-term rental vouchers, like Housing Choice Vouchers, are the best way to keep formerly homeless families housed.
However, only 1 in 4 households who qualify for such vouchers receive them. There is a serious lack of adequate resources for families experiencing homelessness. One study found that 48 percent of waitlists for Housing Choice Vouchers were closed.
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Many families who qualify for a voucher cannot even add their name to the waitlist. When waitlists open, it is often for brief amounts of time and families wait an average of two years (in some places the average is up to eight years) to be given a voucher.
Even once families have vouchers, they cannot use them due to discrimination and other barriers. In Chicago, waitlists were closed for four years and when they opened, more than a quarter of the city’s households applied to be on the waitlist. On a single night in January 2023, over 6,000 people were experiencing homelessness in Chicago.
Rapid rehousing—which provides short-term rental assistance and services—is a great evidence-based bridge for families to regain housing. Rapid rehousing programs can offer services like finding rental housing, covering move-in costs, rent, deposits, utilities, and negotiating with landlords, which can be helpful to families who are restarting their lives.
Maui, like so many other places in the United States, has a limited amount of affordable housing. Hawaii only has 34 units of affordable and available housing rental homes per 100 extremely low-income renter households.
Communities of color who are most affected by natural disasters related to climate change are the same communities who are at increased risk of homelessness. Low-income individuals, including those experiencing homelessness, are also disproportionately affected by climate change.
On a single night in January 2022, San Francisco had over 7,700 people experiencing homelessness; 605 of which were in families with minor children. Families waited an average of four years on the Housing Choice Voucher waitlist.
In Miami, over 3,200 people were experiencing homelessness in January 2023. In late 2020, the average time for a family to be on the waitlist for a Housing Choice Voucher was eight years.
Fifty-five percent of Americans worry “a great deal” about hunger and homelessness, according to a 2021 Gallup poll.
Another poll found that 85 percent reported that homelessness was a serious problem nationally. Ending homelessness is a top government priority.
While people disagree on how to end homelessness, such as whether to require sobriety and mental health treatment for permanent housing or use Housing First approaches, many agree that no child deserves to experience homelessness.
As a society, it is imperative to assume an obligation to protect children. Children who experience homelessness are more likely to have worse physical and mental health, more hospital admissions, developmental delays, and educational underachievement.
It is urgent to work on quickly rehousing any family experiencing homelessness and connect them with social services, employment and childcare, in order to prevent the compounding effects of long-term homelessness.
It is urgent to act now.
Cheyenne Garcia, senior research data analyst, is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project in partnership with Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.