Report: Homelessness continues to rise in Pennsylvania
Michael Swan via Flickr
(The Center Square) – Homelessness in Pennsylvania rose 12.2 percent over the past year, according to this year’s Annual Homelessness Assessment Report published by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The report counted 14,088 individuals, or 11 per 10,000 people, who experienced homelessness in the state throughout 2024, both sheltered and unsheltered.
Among them, 4,564 were in families with children and 690 were unaccompanied youth. 719 were veterans.
The figure reflects a national trend which saw an 18.1 percent increase this year and a dramatic upsurge in those experiencing chronic homelessness since reporting began in 2007. This year saw the highest number of people unhoused on a single night, over 770,000.
In Pennsylvania, the figure is still 13.1 percent below what it was in 2007, but current housing conditions threaten to continue to erode that progress.
While the number of available beds has steadily increased since hitting a low in 2021, it hasn’t kept up with demand.
To that end, the state issued over $6 million in Emergency Solutions Grants to organizations across the state who serve the homeless population in 25 counties earlier this year.
“We recognize that Pennsylvania faces unique challenges and opportunities when it comes to housing,” said Gov. Josh Shapiro in September when announcing his executive order to create a statewide comprehensive Housing Action Plan.
The Department of Community and Economic Development is leading the push to develop the plan. The agency is currently accepting input from Pennsylvanians on meeting its goals.
Philadelphia’s Office of Homelessness Services issued its 2024 Point-in-Time report showing over 5,000 people unhoused within the city on a given day, over a third of the state’s total homeless population.
In Philadelphia, 35 percent of the city’s total unsheltered homeless population was located in Kensington, an area that’s seen national attention for its open-air drug market and the mass suffering related to the ongoing opioid crisis.
Despite these numbers, there are still glimmers of hope that indicate housing programs can make a significant impact. In Philadelphia, homelessness fell by 22 percent from 2018 to 2022, along with a 19 percent reduction in chronic homelessness.
Donna Bullock, former Democratic House representative from Philadelphia, has recently taken the position of CEO at Project H.O.M.E., an organization that provides assistance to Philadelphians experiencing homelessness.
“I’m living proof that these services make a difference. They helped break the cycle of poverty in my own family,” said Bullock.
Christina Lengyel is a Pennsylvania reporter for The Center Square. She is based in Harrisburg.
This article was republished with permission from The Center Square.
Donna Bullock is going to get paid lots of money to do nothing. “I’m living proof, so pay me”.
It’s all a big joke.
I spent 30 years working in Harrisburg getting to my place of work by parking on City Island and walking to downtown. This was way before the Island was transformed into a baseball, stadium and other sports venues and an actual modern parking facility complete with a multi-level parking garage. When i began to park there, the area was the site of illicit sex encounters and a hang-out for local teens who fancied themselves as banditos. Unfortunately, it was also a home base for the homeless. Then came the misguided effort to release all the residents of the local mental institution, in a very short period of time downtown was filled with newly released who had no capacity to care for themselves, the fiction they could be treated with “community resources” was a cruel joke on the most vulnerable among us. The incompetent, the elderly and the lost souls who had been institutionalized from an early age and never socialized. I remember the lady who would not talk, but sang at you if she caught your eye, another very old lady who would sit under one of the parking garage ramps and beg money for breakfast, she knew how much it cost and if you gave her more money than she needed, she gave you change. The saddest I remember is a woman who lived in an abandoned building with her dog, she was a fixture downtown, one night during the Winter, she froze to death. The local mission had run shelter and outreach services since 1914, they got some off the streets, most refused to leave the streets. Seeing all this I have come to the conclusion that for a large portion of the homeless, it is not a question of not having housing available, but a deep-rooted need to be out. (Notice I am not referencing drug addicts, I saw little of that and anyway, it is a problem that is not homelessness, but a cause) I don’t have any answers, but I do think that piling one program on another is not an answer. After a while, this is just like wetting your pants in a dark suit, it gives you a warm feeling, but nobody notices.
So instead of making a continued effort to reach out the homeless, we should let more people like the women you mentioned, freeze to death. Please tell me where in the bible Jesus stated don’t help people in need? Your experience in Harrisburg is anecdotal because you rarely if ever interacted with the homeless individuals to learn why they were on the streets and what it would take for them to leave the streets.
That misguided effort to release people from institutions happened because President Reagan signed a law putting that policy into effect.
I suspect I interacted more with the homeless in those years than you ever have. It is easy for people to say it is moral and right to help the homeless without specifying exactly how. The efforts I have seen from those with pious pronouncements is to send money and hand off the problem to more and more government programs. A disinfected way to self-congratulate and virtue signal. To those who say “do more” I ask, how many homeless are living in your house and are a full member of your family? By the way, you can’t blame Regan for the problem nationwide, he was governor of California when the release program started there, not the governor of all the other states. Just to be sure credit is given where due, the liberal darlings at the ACLU became the champions of deinstitutionalization and became quite good at getting the force of law behind the effort.
Governor Reagan led the way for deinstitutionalization;
“1967 Ronald Reagan is elected governor of California. At this point, the number of patients in state hospitals had fallen to 22,000, and the Reagan administration uses the decline as a reason to make cuts to the Department of Mental Hygiene. They cut 2,600 jobs and 10 percent of the budget despite reports showing that hospitals were already below recommended staffing levels.
1967 Reagan signs the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act and ends the practice of institutionalizing patients against their will, or for indefinite amounts of time. This law is regarded by some as a “patient’s bill of rights”. Sadly, the care outside state hospitals was inadequate. The year after the law goes into effect, a study shows the number of mentally ill people entering San Mateo’s criminal justice system doubles.”
I doubt that you have interacted with homeless more than I have, if you ever interacted with them at all. Given your callous disregard for them. Throwing them a few dollars or food occasionally is not the same as getting know them. I still interact with the homeless and people living at or below the poverty level on a regular basis. I also lived in New York City when The Port Authority bus terminal resembled a mental institution.
Again, you can’t lay the homeless on one person or one political party. Throughout to late 40s, 50s and 60s, the public generally supported reforming institutions that were exposed being just warehouses for those society no longer cared about. Plenty of abuses existed, involuntary frontal lobotomies, cold wet packs. hot wet packs, heavy tranquilizer usage, (Thorazine, Valium, etc.), electroshock, insulin shock and so on. Movies such as “The Snakepit” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest” helped to form an acceptance of deinstitutionalization. To the extent I could, I provided help to my brother Vietnam veterans who were treated as if PTSD didn’t exist and were just lazy, baby-killers home from the jungle. And so you know about my experience with the homeless began with working for a little more than 2 years in the wards of one of Pennsylvania’s mental institutions. Experience invaluable when later meeting them on the streets. BTW you don’t get to judge who does or does not exhibit “callous disregard.”