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Last month an article popped up on my newsfeed declaring that homelessness is on the decline! Waking up to my coffee in my warm suburban home, I felt the waves of relief washing over me. “Ah, another thing I don’t have to worry about today,” my guilt alleviated as I adjusted my thermostat on that unseasonably cold March day. But in a society in which we consume news 140 characters at a time and scroll rapidly past the latest sensational headlines, pronouncements such as this should be worrisome.
On March 22, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported a drop in the number of homeless residents of New Jersey, citing numbers that ranged from a statewide 3% decline in those using emergency housing, to 27% in Camden County, with two-thirds of the state’s counties reporting declines along this spectrum. This was just the most recent article among many in the past few years that have caused our consciences to leap at the good news proclaimed by the headlines. Homelessness is on the decline!
In 2013, The Atlantic announced, “The Astonishing Decline of Homelessness in America,” and a year later The Christian Science Monitor proclaimed “Homelessness declines as new thinking fuels ‘giant untold success.'” Even in the midst of a failing economy with record unemployment and unprecedented mortgage foreclosures, it was reported that there had been a 17% decrease in homelessness over the preceding decade.
At last, we had heard the call… [Read more…] about Not Homeless Enough