One Crisis Away: How a Broken Housing System Fails the Vulnerable

In my time interning for Metrocrest Services, a nonprofit helping individuals and families overcome crises, I came face to face with the realities of one of America’s most pressing and misunderstood issues: homelessness. What I learned there significantly reshaped my understanding of the problem. Contrary to the common belief that homelessness is the result of individual issues such as substance abuse, poor financial choices, or mental illness, what I learned is that the root of homelessness is not primarily personal. It stems from a flawed housing market.

In fact, housing market conditions have a much stronger correlation with homelessness compared to drug use, mental illness, etc (Colburn & Aldern, 2022). This concept is illustrated in Gregg Colburn’s book, “Homelessness is a Housing Problem”, which cites studies expressing that the more inelastic the housing supply is in a given city, the higher the rate of homelessness tends to be. Cities with high rates of homelessness are not necessarily those with the most poverty or drug use. Instead, they are often the cities with the least affordable and least available housing. For instance, cities like San Francisco and Seattle, despite their high incomes and extensive social services, face heightened homelessness rates because their housing markets are constrained by high demand, low vacancy rates, and inelastic housing supply. In contrast, cities with similar poverty and addiction rates but more affordable housing stock, such as Austin, have significantly lower levels of homelessness.

While interning at Metrocrest, I personally met a plethora of clients battling homelessness. Colburn’s theory became more than a theory to me — it was something I witnessed firsthand. While working in the housing department, I met families living in their cars, single mothers bouncing between shelters, and elderly people on fixed incomes facing eviction simply because their social security checks couldn’t keep up with rising rents.

These were not people who had given up on life; they were people priced out of it.

I still frequently think about a woman I met while shadowing a case at Metrocrest Services. She was 55, battling stage four bowel cancer, and had recently been placed on hospice care with fewer than six months to live. She came in seeking emergency rental assistance for herself and her 80-year-old father, a retired man living on fixed Social Security income. After losing her job due to her declining health, their combined income was no longer enough to keep up with the soaring rent prices in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. The stress of housing insecurity loomed larger than the terminal illness she was already fighting. People facing terminal illness should be focused on comfort and dignity in their final days, not scrambling to keep a roof over their heads. Yet in cities with inelastic housing supply and skyrocketing rents, even the most vulnerable are pushed to the brink. Her story is a heartbreaking reminder that homelessness isn’t just about those living on the streets. It's about anyone one crisis away from losing their home in a system that lacks the capacity, compassion, and affordability to catch them.

Furthermore, the real cause of homelessness is not widely known due to the stereotype of modern homeless people in society. In reality, the people facing substance abuse and mental health issues that are so commonly associated with homelessness are only 10% of the homeless population. Those in the 10% are considered chronically homeless, and shelter resources should be able to be allocated towards them. The other 90% are experiencing what’s known as “situational” or “transitional” homelessness: people who are often employed or actively looking for work, who simply cannot find a place to live that they can afford.

So what should be done to fight homelessness? 

First, policymakers must prioritize increasing the supply of affordable housing, especially in high-demand urban areas. Zoning reforms, public housing investment, and incentives for developers to build low-income units are essential. Second, we need to implement rental assistance programs that help keep people housed during times of financial instability. Preventing homelessness is far more effective and humane than responding to it after the fact. Metrocrest does a great job of this, with almost a million dollars a year being allocated toward the housing department. Finally, we must shift public perception. If we want meaningful change, society must recognize that homelessness is not primarily a moral failure or a lifestyle choice: it is a policy failure.

Working at Metrocrest didn’t just expose me to the symptoms of homelessness; it taught me to look upstream. And as Colburn’s work makes clear, the current of homelessness flows not from addiction or poverty alone, but from a housing system that fails to include everyone. If we want to end homelessness, we need to stop asking what’s wrong with the people on the street and start asking what’s wrong with the systems that put them there.