Homelessness in Los Angeles and New York City: A Tale of Two Cities

Abstract

Each year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) produces an Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress that estimates the size of the country's homeless population based on a point-in-time count conducted by local jurisdictions. While there may be concerns about the accuracy of these estimates, undercounts are more likely than overcounts of the numbers of homeless persons in the USA. Since 2010, the overall trend in the number of homeless Americans has been declining. This chapter describes the country's response to a homelessness crisis that began in the early 1980s and explain how the rise of Housing First, an evidence-based approach to ending homelessness that gained national prominence in the early 2000s, changed the national conversation from managing to ending homelessness. Using this as background, it also describes how two US cities–New York City and Los Angeles–approached homelessness in vastly different ways, a reflection of each city's unique history, evolving social priorities, and civic values. The chapter specifically examines how these differences played out and considers how addressing such local variation is critical to future efforts to end homelessness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)