Homelessness Awareness Month: Understanding Homelessness
Homelessness Awareness Month is a critical time to reflect on the challenges that put housing stability at risk, and to deepen our understanding of how we can help neighbors build healthier lives. Homelessness can happen to anyone, often triggered by life events beyond our control—a medical bill, job loss, or personal crisis can swiftly unravel the fragile threads holding housing security together. As affordable housing becomes increasingly scarce, especially in communities like ours, the path back to stability can feel insurmountable.
At Community Action House, we believe in a Housing First approach that provides a solid foundation upon which individuals can build. It takes our whole community, working together, to address these challenges, fostering solutions that create lasting change and ensure everyone has a safe, stable place to call home.
Why do people experience homelessness?
Homelessness can happen to anyone.
All it takes is one unexpected event to turn a challenge into a crisis, leaving someone without a place to call home. Many factors can place individuals at risk for homelessness:
Medical conditions or unplanned medical expenses
Job loss
Divorce
Mental health challenges
Lack of a support network to help individuals withstand unexpected obstacles.
Many individuals experience a combination of these risk factors and are able to stay housed - the proximate cause of homelessness is a lack of housing.
Homelessness increases when housing is scarce and expensive.
Our community faces a growing affordable housing crisis. When there aren’t enough affordable homes for the people who need them, families facing financial insecurity are at greater risk of becoming homeless, and individuals who are already unhoused have fewer options available.
A recent Housing Needs Assessment projected that by 2025, Ottawa County needs an additional 4,385 rental units to meet demand, with 1,421 of those units being in the most affordable category (Bowen National Research, 2021).
In Ottawa County, the rental housing vacancy rate is 1%, while a healthy market has a rate of about 5-6% (United Way, 2021).
Research shows when rents rise and rental housing vacancy rates decrease, homelessness increases (Rai, 2024).
The journey to finding safe housing is a series of hurdles.
Once someone loses their housing, finding a home – which is scarce– requires navigating a lengthy and complex process full of obstacles. There are typically housing vouchers available, but Michigan stopped issuing these in July due to a federal funding shortfall (White, 2024), further limiting housing options for neighbors experiencing homelessness. Once housing vouchers become available again in 2025, they will be in limited supply and come with tight deadlines.
To qualify for a housing voucher, you need an ID—a critical item that is often lost or stolen when living outdoors.
To get an ID, you need an address– a huge barrier when you don’t have a permanent place to live.
If you manage to obtain an ID, you must then legally verify your homelessness, complete a voucher application, and, if approved, navigate numerous housing applications. Housing that vouchers can be applied to must meet certain qualifications, and finding a home that qualifies, and passes an inspection before the voucher expires, is challenging.
Living outdoors every day forces you into survival mode, where uncertainty surrounds every aspect of daily life—you don’t know where your next meal will come from, where you’ll sleep, or if you’ll even be safe. Without a safe and stable place to call home, meeting basic needs consumes your mental and emotional energy.
Homelessness is traumatic, and trauma changes people.
Living outdoors, where fear and instability are constant, can cause traumatic stress. Traumatic stress changes the brain’s chemistry and structure, making it much more difficult to function. The body goes into reactive mode, affecting stress responses and emotional regulation (Hopper et al., 2010). The prefrontal cortex–the part of the brain that involves decision-making, planning, and rationale– gets smaller and has a harder time coming “online” to communicate with the more reactive parts of the brain that are working overtime to protect.
Making plans for meals, transportation, hygiene, employment, and stable housing becomes increasingly difficult.
For some individuals, substance use disorders or mental illness can develop as a response to the trauma of living outdoors (Saldua, 2023). 16% of individuals experiencing homelessness in the United States have a substance use disorder, and 21% report serious mental illness (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, 2023).
For those navigating substance use disorders or mental illness while experiencing homelessness, the path to stability is marked by even greater challenges. Treatment programs often require insurance, reliable transportation, and an ID—each of these a critical resource that is often out of reach.
Even after accessing treatment, Ottawa County’s extremely low rental housing vacancy rate makes securing stable housing even more difficult, limiting access to the safe and stable environment needed to support recovery and avoid relapse.
How can unhoused neighbors regain stability?
Addressing our community’s housing challenges takes all of us, creatively finding solutions, and deepening our shared understanding of the complex factors that impact homelessness. Working in close collaboration with the Lakeshore Housing Alliance, our team likewise follows a Housing First approach, combining it with highly relational and collaborative service, to help neighbors find & maintain safe, stable housing.
A Housing First approach acknowledges that stable housing is a fundamental need and the critical first step in building long-term stability. Evidence shows that Housing First programs reduce homelessness and increase long-term stability (The Community Guide, 2019). Meeting housing needs first allows us to remove a significant barrier to other life improvements: when we put housing first, people are more likely to achieve job stability and better health and therefore remain housed.
Housing First doesn’t mean housing only—it creates a foundation upon which further progress is possible. Once housed, our team walks alongside individuals to connect them to resources that help them stay housed. From food access through Food Club, to Financial Wellness counseling and classes, recently housed neighbors are more likely to maintain stability if they have access to coordinated resources and a network of support.
For families in housing, but teetering on the edge of losing their homes, our Financial Wellness programs help disrupt the pathway to homelessness through budget counseling, rental counseling, and foreclosure prevention.
A stable home isn’t just a roof over someone’s head—it’s the dignity, motivation, and opportunity required to rebuild. Everyone deserves a stable home and the peace of mind that comes with feeling safe. At Action House, we’re dedicated to walking alongside our neighbors, partnering with them to navigate not only the journey to housing but also the ongoing support they need to stay housed. Together, through creative solutions and a shared understanding, we can build a community where all of our neighbors have what they need to thrive, and no one faces challenges alone.
References
The Community Guide. (2019). Social Determinants of Health: Permanent Supportive Housing
with Housing First (Housing First Programs). https://www.thecommunityguide.org/findings/social-determinants-health-housing-first-programs.html
Bowen National Research. (2021). Housing Needs Assessment Update.
https://www.housingnext.org/_files/ugd/8dbec7_932f7ff01ac54ed4bab4251d7ce5ac4f.pdf
Hopper, E., Bassuk, E., Olivet, J. (2010). Shelter from the Storm: Trauma-Informed Care in
Homelessness Services Settings. The Open Health Services and Policy Journal, 3, 80-100. https://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOHSPJ/TOHSPJ-3-80.pdf
Rai, V. (2024). Local rental market dynamics and homelessness rates among unaccompanied
youths, single adults, and people in families. Journal of Urban Affairs. , https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07352166.2024.2323521
Saldua, M. (2023). Addressing Social Determinants of Health Among Individuals Experiencing
Homelessness. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
United Way. (2021). 2021 Community Assessment for Ottawa County.
https://www.miottawa.org/Community/CAA/pdf/2021-Community-Assessment.pdf
White, R. (2024). Michigan stopped issuing Section 8 housing vouchers, closed waitlist. MLive.