More demand for housing aid and less money from the feds have combined to create a simple but brutal equation swelling the number of homeless individuals and families in the Cincinnati area and across the country.
As more low-income people need affordable places to live, they have fewer housing options to choose from and less federal aid available to them, data shows. That’s left more families and individuals on the streets.
In 2011, $2,225,000 was available to Hamilton County residents for rental assistance through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. This year, it’s just $750,000.
The cuts come at a time when affordable housing is getting harder to find. The amount of available affordable housing has decreased by 6.8 million units since 2007, and the number of low-income renters who need it has grown by more than 2.5 million, according to data from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
The money spent on rental aid in the past made a dent — a study by the National Alliance to End Homelessness found the number of people experiencing homelessness in the United States dropped by 17 percent from 2005 to 2012, despite the economic recession and national housing crisis.
Ninety-seven percent of families in Hamilton County who received rental assistance avoided becoming homeless, according to a report by Strategies to End Homelessness, a Cincinnati nonprofit.
Despite the success of the program and increasing need, the number of people in Hamilton County served by federal anti-homelessness efforts has dropped by more than 56 percent since 2011.
That year, 2,810 people received rental or utility assistance in Hamilton County from programs provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That number dropped to 1,870 in 2012 and dropped again to 942 in 2013.
Meanwhile, the number of homeless in the county is rising. According to the Strategies report, 8,271 people in Hamilton County experienced homelessness last year. That’s up from 7,838 people in 2011 and 7,983 in 2012.
Families are especially hard hit by federal spending cuts.
“I have never seen this many families come to us from sleeping in a car,” Darlene Guess, director of client programs at Bethany House Services, told The Cincinnati Enquirer July 9. “We had a mom and son come to us from an abandoned building. I have never seen an onslaught of families coming here from the streets.”
Bethany House and four other shelters that serve homeless families in the city help about 1,000 families a year, service providers estimate.
The reductions come as a result of the 2011 sequester, continuing across-the-board cuts to federal programs that happened as a result of Congress failing to reach budget agreements. Some of the funds were first allocated during the federal government’s 2009 stimulus efforts.
Other dynamics associated with gridlock in Congress have exacerbated the problems facing low-income people on the brink of homelessness — Democrats and the GOP in Congress have fought a pitched battle over extending unemployment benefits for millions of Americans, for instance, as unemployment levels recede at a stubbornly slow pace. Many have reached the end of their benefits and now struggle to pay rent or mortgages.
