High Rent Relative To Income Plus Rent Increases Equal Homelessness

Homelessness in the United States is heavily concentrated in metropolitan areas where rents are more than 30% of income and rents have increased.

The researchers grouped the 386 markets they studied into six “clusters” based on homelessness risk. 

One cluster — which is composed of 54 regions, including big coastal cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as Las Vegas, St. Louis, Missouri, and Anchorage, Alaska — is home to 47 percent of the US’s entire homeless population, despite only housing 15 percent of all Americans. The cities in this cluster have higher rates of homelessness than other parts of the country, as well as higher average rents; nearly half of all renters in these cities are rent-burdened, based on the report’s findings. 

Conversely, another cluster that includes central Minnesota, Provo, Utah, and the entire state of Rhode Island has the lowest rate of homelessness, the lowest poverty rate, and lower-than-average rents. More than one-third of all Americans live in this cluster, according to the report, but it’s home to just 14 percent of the US’s total homeless population.

From here, based heavily on this Pew Report.

In Denver there have been particularly high levels of homeless families with children, which fits this narrative.