What’s the Real Reason People Become Homeless?

Most of us have walked or driven by someone camped out on the sidewalk. Those of us who are parents might have heard this question from our kids: “Why do we have a home and that person doesn’t?”

You probably didn’t have a good answer. Bad luck? A shortage of housing supply and exploding prices? Mental illness? Addiction? Some combination of the four? But mostly you wish the answer wasn’t: “Because we live in an unfair society and we look the other way so that we can function.”

Kevin Adler is an activist and author of the book When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America. He isn’t afraid of our children’s questions. In fact, he believes he has compelling and effective answers. Flying in the face of the learned helplessness that so many of us feel these days about the unhoused neighbors in our cities, Adler argues that we can stop compartmentalizing and actually do something about it.

I spoke with Adler about his book and how each one of us can be part of building a more hospitable country.

Courtney Martin: One of the fundamental arguments of this book is that homelessness isn’t just a result of economic poverty, but relational poverty. Can you explain what that is and why it’s so rampant?

Kevin Adler: Eleven years ago, I met a person experiencing homelessness named Adam who first attuned me to the concept of relational poverty. I’ll never forget his words: “I never realized I was homeless when I lost my housing, only when I lost my family and friends.”

Adam was in a very tenuous situation in life, but had been able to get by for a while through the support of his loved ones—staying with family, relying on friends for a bit of work or money, etc. When Adam’s access to social capital ran dry—perhaps due to an argument with a loved one, the unexpected death of a family member, or the like—his situation went from bad to worse.

Though we often think of poverty as a lack of financial resources, what Adam was describing was relational poverty, or the profound lack of nurturing relationships which, when combined with stigma and shame, leads to nearly unimaginable levels of isolation and loneliness among many individuals experiencing homelessness. As one unhoused neighbor put it in the early months of the pandemic, “You don’t need to teach me about social distancing, that’s my life already.”

Stories like Adam’s are not unique: As many as one in three individuals experiencing homelessness in the United States have lost their social support systems, attributing the immediate cause of their homelessness to a falling-out with or loss of a loved one.

Homelessness is a housing problem, but it is not only a housing problem. Aside from the lack of stable housing, relational poverty may in fact be the most universal characteristic of experiencing homelessness. As Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern have indicated in their recent book, “Homelessness risk is far greater for people with limited support from a community, low self-esteem, and a lack of belonging.” This is why [the Housing First model is not called] Housing Only: Indeed, one of the five principles of the Housing First strategy is social and community integration.

Finally, to better understand the significance of relational poverty for so many of our unhoused neighbors, we can look upstream toward our housing insecurity neighbors more generally. With 40% of Americans self-reporting that they would not know where to get $400 for an unexpected emergency, and over one in two Americans one paycheck away from not being able to pay rent, it is actually surprising that more people are not experiencing homelessness. Given these stats, how is it possible that “only” 1-2% of people in the U.S. experience homelessness at some point over the course of the year, rather than 10 to 20 times that? I believe one of the main reasons is due to family, friends, faith-based groups, and other forms of social support helping people get by.

To paraphrase Bill Withers, we all need somebody to lean on. We ignore relational poverty at our own peril.

CM: I really appreciated how you delineated the different reasons that this kind of disconnection can go on for so many years—barriers to access, like internet and cell phone, and administrative issues, for example—but also the emotional fractures. Your nonprofit reconnects folks by jumping over some of the accessibility barriers, but how do you help people deal with the emotional depths of reconnection? Seems like a tall order.

KA: We consider our work to be a first step toward reconnection, and try to set expectations and provide support on all sides accordingly.

For example, in most of the reunion cases that our community of volunteer digital detectives work on each week, it has been years or even decades since the last contact occurred. Thus, the messages we deliver (and encourage) from our unhoused neighbors tend to be openers to re-engage: “I love you,” “I miss you,” “I’m sorry,” “I’m thinking of you,” “I want you back in my life,” “I’m still alive.”

Our staff and global community of volunteers have a mantra (well, several, but here’s one of them): You know your relationships better than we do. Sometimes, reconnecting is not appropriate or in the best interest of one or both parties; tragic cases abound of homelessness resulting from domestic violence, LGBTQ+ youth escaping an unsafe home environment, etc. Sometimes, bridges have been burned between a person experiencing homelessness and most of their loved ones, and family members choose not to reconnect. We don’t believe reconnecting is a one-size-fits-all solution to homelessness. But we know that for many of our unhoused neighbors, it is an essential step toward lasting stability and well-being.

Finally, I think it’s important to note that though the process of reconnecting can be incredibly emotional, the experience of homelessness itself is incredibly emotional, physically devastating, and very isolating—the most heartbreaking cardboard sign I ever saw read, “At least give me the finger.”

When I started this journey by spending a year helping a few dozen of our unhoused neighbors share their stories, I was struck by how many folks talked at length about loved ones who often were no longer in their lives—beloved siblings, favorite teachers, children who are now adults. In other words, it’s not like family isn’t on the minds of our unhoused neighbors.

CM: I was so sad to learn that homelessness is growing among those over 65 and that a quarter of people experiencing homelessness are under 25. What does it say about our society that we tolerate such harsh lives for our most vulnerable? Are there contemporary societies where this is not the case, and what can we learn from them?

KA: Homelessness is a policy choice. Thus, there are plenty of other places where homelessness is not nearly as prevalent as it is today in the United States.

As one example, Finland has received widespread recognition for successfully providing permanent housing without preconditions and wraparound support services to most of its people experiencing homelessness. In 1987, there were 18,000 people experiencing homelessness in Finland. In 2023, the figure had dropped to 3,429.

By contrast, in 1987, there were 500,000 to 600,000 experiencing homelessness in the U.S. According to the 2023 PIT Count in the U.S., that figure has increased to 653,104 people. If we prioritized affordable housing and a robust social safety net for our most vulnerable residents, we would have a much smaller population of people forced to live in shelters and on our streets.

CM: Why do we accept such a broken, costly status quo in the United States?

KA: I believe in large part it is due to another form of relational disconnection: Many of us “housed people” are just as disconnected from our unhoused neighbors as many of them are from their loved ones.

When I give a talk, I tend to ask my audience two questions: “First, how many of you care about the issue of homelessness?” Every hand shoots up. “Second, how many of you know someone who is currently experiencing homelessness?” In response to this question, never more than 5–10% of hands remain in the air.

I believe this disconnection is part of the problem, for we don’t know who “they” are, as the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors that they are. Instead, we largely see people experiencing homelessness as problems to be solved, not people to be loved. I believe we have a duty to keep reminding ourselves of the fundamental humanity of our unhoused neighbors, lest we lose a bit of our own.

Consider the aftermath of a flood or wildfire. For a brief period of time, we tend to rally around those who were affected, organizing food drives, building shelters, creating online fundraisers and advocacy campaigns, or passing emergency ordinances, in what sociologist Charles E. Fritz described as the emergence of the therapeutic community. We don’t look at survivors of these disasters as deserving of their situation—very few would ask, “Well, did they have the right kind of flood insurance? Why did they choose to live in such a vulnerable area?”

And yet, when it comes to homelessness in the U.S., we maintain a mindset of rugged individualism, and wonder what the person did or what is wrong with the person to result in their situation.

I believe the way to overcome this narrow-mindedness is through relationships and storytelling.

CM: You make a lot of structural suggestions, but one of them is guaranteed income, based on your own successful pilot. Tell us more about that.

KA: I began as a skeptic about basic income. Not so much whether our unhoused neighbors would use the money in a way we might consider wise, but whether a few hundred dollars a month would be enough to help people experiencing homelessness meaningfully improve their lives, much less get off the streets.

Fortunately, our volunteer community was wiser than me. In 2020, we created a phone buddy program, which matches unhoused neighbors with trained volunteers for weekly phone calls and texts. Within a few months of its creation, our volunteers began asking whether we could provide some money to their unhoused friend. Through their interactions, trust was built, relationships were built, and, with it, the desire to see their friend succeed and an understanding of the multitude of barriers keeping them from doing so. And so, in December 2020, we created what turned out to be the first basic income pilot for individuals experiencing homelessness in the U.S.

We gave $500 a month for six months to 14 participants in our phone buddy program, all of whom were nominated by their friends. Within six months, 66% of those who were homeless at the beginning of the program had secured stable housing. They used the money better than we could have used it for them: About one-third of funds were spent on food, another third was spent on housing, and the last third was spent on a mix of child care, storage, paying down debt, supporting family, and the like.

The initial “Miracle Money” pilot was very small, but it showed us what we needed to know to double down on direct cash. Today, we are in the final months of a $2.1 million randomized controlled trial, funded by Google.org and other foundations and individual donors, with research led by Dr. Ben Henwood and his team from the USC Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.

The preliminary results are very promising: Among people who received the $750-a-month payment, the proportion who reported spending time unsheltered in the past month decreased from 30% at baseline to under 12% at the six-month follow-up, which was a statistically significant change. For those in the control group, a modest decrease from 28% to 23% was not statistically significant.

Today, there are more than 100 communities across the U.S. and Canada that have pilot programs based on basic income, including some with a focus on homelessness such as the Denver Basic Income Project and the New Leaf Project out of Vancouver. We are excited to be part of this movement to trust people with the resources they need to better their lives.

CM: You encourage individuals reading the book to re-humanize “the homeless” in their own lives, neighborhoods, communities. What is the first step to doing that?

KA: If I can be a bit self-promotional in this last question: Consider volunteering with us as a phone buddy or digital detective at Miracle Messages and reading When We Walk By, as this is a major focus of the book! The awkwardness is normal at first, but no need to go through it alone.