Homelessness Starts With Housing

Homelessness Starts With Housing

In this episode of Defining Affordable, Jaime and Robin explore why the cost of housing is the single strongest predictor of homelessness — and how policy decisions helped create today’s crisis.

Through the history of housing policy in the United States — from the New Deal and deinstitutionalization to the loss of SRO housing and major federal funding cuts — they unpack how rising rents and the shortage of deeply affordable homes create the homelessness crisis we see today.

The conversation covers:

• Why rent prices are the strongest predictor of homelessness
• The loss of low-cost housing options
• How policy decisions shaped today’s crisis
• What “Housing First” means and why it works

This episode connects the dots between housing affordability, public policy, and homelessness.

Sources and Further Reading:

Colburn, Gregg, and Clayton Page Aldern. Homelessness Is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns. University of California Press, 2022.

Burt, Martha R. “Helping America’s Homeless: Emergency Shelter or Affordable Housing?” Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin–Madison, https://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc52b.pdf.

“Brief History of Homelessness in the U.S.” Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Magazine, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2026, https://magazine.publichealth.jhu.edu/2026/brief-history-homelessness-us.

“Federal Housing Cuts Left Millions Without Homes.” WRAP, 28 July 2023, https://wraphome.org/2023/07/28/federal-housing-cuts-left-millions-without-homes/.

Hartman, Chester, and David Robinson. “Reagan’s Legacy: Homelessness in America.” Shelterforce, 1 May 2004, https://shelterforce.org/2004/05/01/reagans-legacy-homelessness-in-america/.

“How Housing Costs Drive Levels of Homelessness.” The Pew Charitable Trusts, 22 Aug. 2023, https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/08/22/how-housing-costs-drive-levels-of-homelessness.

“How States and Cities Decimated America’s Lowest-Cost Housing Option.” The Pew Charitable Trusts, July 2025, https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2025/07/how-states-and-cities-decimated-americans-lowest-cost-housing-option.

“Homelessness in America.” Places Journal, https://placesjournal.org/article/tent-city-america/.

“State of Homelessness: 2025 Edition.” National Alliance to End Homelessness, https://endhomelessness.org/state-of-homelessness/.

Tsai, Jack, et al. “Housing and Homelessness in the United States.” National Library of Medicine, 2023, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10574586/. Accessed 12 May 2026.