Why Are So Many People Experiencing Homelessness?

Every day, more individuals and families across the United States—and right here in Florida—are being pushed into homelessness. It’s easy to make assumptions about the causes, but the truth is, homelessness is the result of multiple, overlapping systems that are falling short.  Here’s a closer look at the root causes of homelessness, and why this crisis continues to grow.

🔑 1. Lack of Affordable Housing

The leading driver of homelessness is simple: there is not enough affordable housing. Across the country, rents are rising much faster than wages. In Florida, only 23 affordable and available rental homes exist for every 100 extremely low-income renters.

This is really simple.  If there was enough housing for people at all income, we could quickly solve homelessness.

💸 2. Poverty and Income Inequality

Poverty puts people on the edge of housing instability. When you live paycheck to paycheck, one emergency—an illness, a broken car, a lost job—can be the tipping point.

Without a financial safety net, even a minor setback can lead to eviction.  The median household income in the State of Florida is $73,311. A single adult makes about $30,584.  That’s the median – that means half of the people are making less than that.

🧠 3. Mental Health and Substance Use Challenges

While mental illness and substance use don’t cause most homelessness, they can make it harder to escape it. People with untreated conditions often face discrimination, lack of income, and difficulty navigating services. And without stable housing, it’s nearly impossible to recover or stay well.

Too often, people only get help after they’ve lost everything—if at all.

🏥 4. Lack of Access to Healthcare

Uninsured or underinsured individuals face compounding risks. Medical debt is a common cause of eviction and financial ruin. Chronic illnesses, disabilities, and injuries make it difficult to work or maintain housing—especially when care is inaccessible or unaffordable.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 5. Domestic Violence, Youth Displacement, and Family Conflict

Homelessness isn’t just a housing problem—its a people problem. Survivors of domestic violence often flee with no money, no documents, and nowhere to go. LGBTQ+ youth are disproportionately kicked out or rejected by their families. Teens aging out of foster care frequently fall through the cracks, with no long-term support.

These aren’t isolated stories—they’re patterns we see every day.

🏛️ 6. Systemic Failures and Public Policy

We didn’t get here overnight. Decades of disinvestment in public housing, mental health care, and income supports have created a system where vulnerability equals risk of homelessness.

When people leave prison, aging out of foster care, or being discharged from a hospital or treatment center, they often exit directly into homelessness and with the new legislation – often find themselves arrested, only to be released back into homelessness again.

🏘️ 7. Zoning, Land Use, and “Not In My Backyard” Attitudes

Even when communities want to build more housing or shelters, local zoning laws and NIMBY opposition slow or stop the process. These local decisions add up—and have contributed to a national crisis.

🔄 8. Displacement and the Cycle of Instability

Natural disasters, rent hikes, evictions, and redevelopment projects frequently displace low-income renters. Once someone becomes homeless, it can be difficult to climb back into housing without assistance—and often, the longer someone is unhoused, the harder it gets.

Homelessness Is Solvable—But Only If We Understand It

Understanding why people are homeless is the first step toward ending homelessness. This crisis isn’t inevitable. It’s the result of policy choices, and it can be changed with better ones.

Solutions exist: The local Continuum of Care model – bringing resources together including housing with healthcare for severely disabled persons, supportive services, affordable housing development, eviction prevention, and increased investment in health and behavioral care. But to solve the crisis, we need the public and policymakers to see the whole picture—not just the symptoms, but the causes.  There are a lot of people pointing to community providers and blaming them, when they do not have control of every system of care or decisions made at all levels of Government.

No one wants people living on the streets, we have the solution – help us move people into housing and keep them there.

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Get the Facts

I’m proud of the work that is being done every day in every community in this State.  Thanks to the success of the Florida Continuums of Care and the State of Florida leading the way –

We have a robust CoC System of Care with links to community partners; an affordable housing trust fund with homeless set aside and a Challenge Grant that allows CoCs the flexibility to respond to local gaps.

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Why Local Continuum of Care (CoC) Programs Work

I’ve been involved in homeless services for nearly my entire career—with a brief detour into the corporate world and a short time at a nonprofit serving domestic violence survivors. But I came back. After those experiences, I realized something fundamental:

I am deeply committed to ending homelessness.

When I first started this work, the community I lived in had one struggling drop-in center that provided meals and a cot to sleep on. They couldn’t secure enough funding to keep staff overnight.  It didn’t matter what position you had in the Organization, everyone pitched in to make things work – we stayed overnight, sorted clothing donations, cooked meals, served meals – whatever we had to do to make sure that the people who came had food, clothing and shelter.  The community’s largest church had a food pantry and their office was often responding to families in need.  A few organizations provided services —food pantries, thrift stores, a drop-in center to apply for food stamps and to complete job searches, and a domestic violence provider that didn’t yet see how their work was connected to homelessness.

It was a decent, well-meaning response—but we had no idea how many people were really in need in the community and certainly we were unable to provide services that people really needed to end their homelessness.  So despite our efforts, we were serving the symptom not solving the problem.   There was no coordination. A person might go to one agency for food, another for rent, and yet another for utilities—everyone pitching in for short-term needs. But no one knew what other services had been provided and no one did a full assessment to see what the client actually needed to succeed on their own next month.  Each organization operated in a vacuum, often with long lines and little time to really understand what each client needed.

When I look back at the history of Florida Coalition to End Homelessness, Homeless Continuums of Care (CoC) were being developed in Florida in the 2000’s.  The concept of the CoC originated from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development back in 1994, under the Bush administration.  Communities were called to better coordinate the delivery of housing and services, aiming for a more collaborative approach.  The model was formalized in 2009 under the Hearth Act.

Fast Forward 20+ Years: Why Florida’s CoCs Work

Two decades later, I can confidently say: Florida’s Continuums of Care have built something that works. While they may not have every resource needed to solve every issue, they have something far more valuable—coordination.  I wanted to take a moment to share what I’ve seen—before and after—and why this model makes such a difference.

What is a Homeless CoC?

A Continuum of Care (CoC) is a local or regional group of partners—domestic violence shelters, veteran service organizations, healthcare providers, mental health and substance use services, local government agencies, funders, churches, community foundations, and more—all working together with one shared goal: to end homelessness.

A robust CoC includes:

Prevention services (to keep people housed),
Diversion/Outreach services (to meet people where they are)
Emergency shelter (for those in crisis),
Rapid rehousing programs (to quickly move people off the streets), and
Permanent supportive housing (for people with complex, long-term needs).

But none of these work without supportive services.
People also need help navigating benefits, finding work, addressing health concerns, and building stability. That’s why the CoC System of Care connects people to the resources that will keep them housed: case management, mental health care, substance use treatment, healthcare, job training, and more.

But a CoC is more than just a collection of services. It’s:

Coordination across providers
Client tracking to reduce duplication and improve outcomes
Performance measurement to see what’s working,
Resource alignment—investing in services based on actual community need
Targeting housing and services for those with the greatest need

This is why the Continuum of Care Program works.  It’s not scattered nonprofits trying to piece things together. It’s a system—driven by data, compassion, and collaboration.

It means a local response to the need – and the community.  Of course, each community’s resources and housing opportunities are different.  The response must be tailored to the resources that are available.  And for people experiencing homelessness, its a more coordinated approach to services.  No, it’s not perfect – we don’t have every resource in every community to meet every need – no one does but I still envision a system where EVERYONE works together for one mission – to end homelessness.

We are fortunate in Florida to have a robust service model, state funding to fill critical gaps, and supportive housing made possible through affordable housing trust funds. This progress exists because we have thought leaders and visionaries who understand a simple truth: housing ends homelessness. But we still don’t have enough of it. When there aren’t enough homes for everyone, it becomes a game of housing musical chairs—and inevitably, people are left without a seat.

If you are really interested in ending homelessness in your community, I welcome you to join your local Continuums of Care to help find better solutions.   If you question the commitment that members of this group have – I welcome you to join a meeting or come to our conference.  We are all committed to ending homelessness – to banding together –  Solutions grow stronger when we build them together.

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