Family homelessness in New York City jumped 66% in 2023

Among those homeless in the nation’s capital is Mercedez Milling, a 28-year-old single mother of four. She delivered packages and worked at a pizza shop during the pandemic, but experienced homelessness during that time and bounced between living in her car and staying with family. 

She and her children have been living in a Salvation Army transitional housing program with some 25 other families for most of this year—and Milling is taking personal finance and workforce development classes. But one big obstacle is stopping her from getting a job: She gave birth to her youngest at her mother’s home during the pandemic and never received an official birth certificate. Without it, she’s unable to sign her daughter up for child care. 

“There’s too many things to think about,” she said. “Making sure we have a place to sleep is just one of them.”

Still, Milling remains optimistic. She wants to return to school almost a decade after dropping out of college, and hopes to become a doula.

“Once you become comfortable with a house, you don’t want to see the streets,” she said.

Milling is fortunate to live in a city where she’s been able to find shelter.

While policies like right-to-shelter—which guarantee families a place to sleep at night—exist in cities like New York, Boston and DC, many households in other parts of the country are left to navigate homelessness on their own. 

Roughly half of all homeless families with children in places like Tennessee and Idaho were unsheltered as of last year, according to HUD. In Oregon, that number was even higher. In Raleigh, N.C., where that number is closer to 72%—the highest among big cities in the U.S.—local authorities are running against the clock to expand their services.

Lorena McDowell, who directs the department of housing affordability in Wake County, where Raleigh is located, has taken on the challenge after living at shelters and group homes herself while growing up in Minnesota. 

“I am not the norm. The norm is you end up just trying to figure out how to survive and feed yourself,” she said. “The American dream, the idea of owning a home or going to college, is almost just like you don’t even see it because you’re just trying to survive.”

McDowell is waiting on a study on shelter needs that will help her team set priorities to tackle the issue. Still, she says the solution can’t lie solely on finding people a place to sleep—it’s finding people a place to live. 

“Once you fall into homelessness, it is incredibly difficult to dig back out of it,” said McDowell. “Your kids lost all their toys, all their clothes, all their comforts, all your furniture, all the things you need to build a home.”