On the 16th of December 2024, the New Hampshire Coalition to End Homelessness (NHCEH) released their annual report on the state of homelessness in the Granite State. The report compiled data from across the state during 2023, showing that the rising growth of homelessness in New Hampshire continues to reach worrying new highs.

The NHCEH primarily used data from two sources: The Point In Time (PIT) Count and the Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS). The PIT Count is performed by the state on one day in January to count the number of unhoused people living in New Hampshire on the day of the count. The HMIS counts the number of unhoused people across the year who receive services or assistance from the state due to their personal circumstances.

The Data

First, let’s take a look at the national data so we can have a baseline, and then we’ll go into the statistics for the Granite State. In 2023, the number of homeless people in the United States during the night of the PIT Count was 653,104. Which is an increase of about 70,000 from 2022’s 582,462. That’s about 20 out of every 10,000 people in the United States being homeless during the PIT Count. 41 of the 50 states saw an increase in unhoused persons. This continues a decades-long trend of rising rates of homelessness in the United States, much of which can be attributed to the worsening economy, a housing market crisis, low wages, no rent control, and on top of that, COVID.

New Hampshire’s statistics are more dire than the national rates. The Granite State saw the largest increase in PIT Count numbers in the country by percentage in 2023. NH saw a massive 52.1% increase in PIT Count numbers, rising from 1,605 in the year prior to 2,441. Meanwhile, nationally we saw an average increase of 12%, an already large jump now dwarfed by NH. This was the biggest jump in PIT Count numbers for New Hampshire in recent history, with the previous notable jump being in 2020, seeing a 20% increase from 2019.

Additionally, there was a 150% increase in chronic homelessness from 2019 to 2023, which is defined as people being unhoused for twelve months or more. One-third of that number came in 2023 alone, from 359 to 545 people, or 51.8%. While the Granite State’s rates of homelessness were slightly below the national average, with 17.4 out of every 10,000 people in the state being unhoused compared to 19.4 nationally, NH had the biggest increase in the country and gives us the 14th highest rate in the country.

The PIT Count is just a snapshot of homelessness rates on a single day of the year. There’s also the Homeless Management Information Systems, or HMIS, conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The HMIS counts the number of unhoused people across the year who receive services or assistance from the state due to their situation. This data is collected from various Continuum of Care branches, of which there are only three in New Hampshire: Manchester, Greater Nashua, and the rest of the NH being under Balance of State.

In total, the HMIS counted 6,806 unhoused people in 2023, which is a 12.9% increase from the previous calendar year and 49.5% increase from 2020. This is a larger sum than the populations of the vast majority of New Hampshire’s towns. For example, the town of Plymouth has a population of 6,682 people. This adds up to 49 out of every 10,000 Granite Staters being unhoused in 2023. A quarter of those people were in Manchester alone, with the city registering a staggering 161 per 10,000. 13% of the HMIS count came from the Greater Nashua CoC, with the remaining 60% coming from the rest of the state.

This trend looks to increase in the future, with preliminary data already suggesting another massive jump in 2024. With a new Republican administration, we need to look at what the future holds for New Hampshire’s homelessness crisis.

What’s Next?

With the new Trump administration, a Republican majority in the Senate, House, and Judiciary, as well as the newly inaugurated governorship of Kelly Ayotte, the future looks grim in the United States and New Hampshire. With the Republican Party with Democrats alongside them consistently dehumanizing homeless folks and pursuing policies that will exacerbate the problem and make lives worse for unhoused people and those at risk of being unhoused. We cannot expect the downward spiral of homelessness in New Hampshire to change course without direct action.

During the 2024 gubernatorial debates, Kelly Ayotte supported Manchester’s ban of outdoor camps on public property, a policy that only harms homeless people by forcing them to move camp in service of “cleaning up the city,” and echoed dehumanizing talking points broadly associating homeless folks with drug addiction and filth. Meanwhile, refusing to enact any policies that would actually clean up the streets such as more public trash cans, public restrooms and more affordable housing. Ayotte has yet to detail a plan to prevent homelessness and has only offered vague solutions to the housing crisis by reducing costs for homes with no clear policy and vision on reducing the problem.

What about President Trump? Trump’s policies are already looking to have a severely negative impact on the issue. During his opening flurry of executive orders, Trump terminated federal DEI programs, immediately putting an unknown number of federal workers out of a job. This puts disadvantaged minority groups at an even greater risk of being unhoused in the near future. With Trump looking set to double down on ending so-called DEI programs, and pairing that with the repealing of several Civil Rights era executive orders banning hiring discrimination, this problem will only grow worse during the next four years.

Trump and Elon Musk’s federal funding freeze will slash budgets for agencies like the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is essential to keeping track of and managing the homeless population in America. Numerous other federal agencies getting their funding cut will only serve to exacerbate the issue. Additionally, the new administration is attacking the National Labor Relations Board, which will directly harm American workers by making unionizing even harder. It is a fact that unions guarantee better benefits and pay for their workers and preventing unions does the exact opposite leading to more unstable work and compensation.

What Are Some Short-Term Solutions?

While our current politicians and lawmakers might not care to address the homelessness crisis, there are still policies we can push them on to help improve the lives of currently unhoused people and prevent people from becoming homeless in the future.

For starters, we should demand our lawmakers pass higher minimum wages and decrease the power landlords have. Landlords unfairly and unreasonably raising rent is a large contributing factor to poverty, so by enacting tighter policies regarding rent control, we can help out low income households. On that note, we should also push for more unionization, both in the workplace and in rented houses and apartments. With strong workers and tenants unions, we can use our collective power to get higher wages and lower rent. We do this by withholding what greedy bosses and landlords need most, our labor and our rent.

We can also demand that local businesses have restrooms accessible for all and people should boycott those that don’t. One shouldn’t have to be a paying customer or an employee in order to use a bathroom. Denying people the ability to use a restroom under the guise of “maintaining cleanliness” of the establishment is an inherently selfish and antisocial act. No matter the class or backround, everyone has the same needs, and some have more than others. Public restrooms should be a utility for all to use.

We should also make our voices heard for funding of drug clinics and healthcare. There are many homeless people that have turned to drugs as an escape from their homelessness. Unhoused folks have become addicted through other reasons such as inappropriate prescription of opiates at the behest of pharmaceutical companies that then lead to financial ruin. Our society has let these people down and refused to efficiently help them for far too long. Having people be able to check in at a drug clinic, dispose of paraphernalia, and get the help they need will mitigate the effects of the ongoing drug crisis in America. These health clinics should provide amnesty for those who abuse illegal drugs and not report them to the police. Addiction is a medical issue and we as a country should not make certain medical issues a crime because it makes us uncomfortable, this only serves to further harm those addicted and increase the problem. In addition, having guaranteed healthcare can help to prevent people from becoming unhoused in the first place. This will not only free the health system from unethical influence by pharmaceutical companies, but also will cut costs by running for the people, not for profit. Many people are homeless because of chronic health issues, both mental and physical, that come with a flurry of unaffordable bills. Having free healthcare and a more serious and modern approach to mental health can help put people on the right path.

What We Need To Build Towards

While having short-term and temporary solutions to the homelessness crisis is good, it’s also important to have long-term ideas for systemic change to minimize or even eliminate homelessness.

For starters, having universal healthcare and free education is essential. Not only will this improve the quality of life of the country, but it will also remove two big barriers to stable housing. Many people are unhoused due to crippling medical or educational debt, and many more remain unhoused due to a lack of affordable education, and thus more difficulty applying for living wage jobs. We can also implement more sweeping welfare programs and universal basic income.

Criminal justice reform is another way to decrease rates of homelessness. By decriminalizing drugs use and possession, decreasing prison time, ending systemic racial injustice, and making it easier for people with criminal backgrounds to be reintegrated into society, we can give more checks and balances for stable housing. These people need help, not to be locked away from society as a way to hide our shame. These are our brothers and sisters in our community and we must help them like we would our actual brothers and sisters.

And lastly, we can work towards a future in which we have socialized housing in the United States. One can look towards Vienna’s Gemeindebauten as inspiration. The Austrian capital has a great model of socialized housing that comes from decades of socialist work. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, Austria transitioned to a parliamentary republic, and the capital municipality came under the control of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria, or SDAP. Until 1934, the SDAP addressed the housing crisis in Vienna and pursued a policy of housing as many people as possible.

Throughout their time in power, they built tens of thousands of large residential blocks and prioritized moving refugees, the disabled, and other disadvantaged people in as the first tenants. By 1934, 200,000 people, one-tenth of Vienna’s population, was living in a municipal residential block. These blocks have no landlords and are owned by the city itself. Rent is very affordable, with a 54 square meter two bedroom apartment costing €596, or $615, a month, about a third of the rent cost for a similarly sized apartment in much of Europe and the US. This makes moving into a block affordable for people across many different economic backgrounds, from students to the elderly. Today, around 60’s of the city’s population lives in a gemeindebau.

For us in the United States, it’s a worthy goal to work towards in the future.

What Can You Do?

While the issue of homelessness is here to stay, there are steps that we can take on an individual and community level to help mitigate the issue. The first thing we can do is bring more awareness to the issue and demand lawmakers and representatives to push for more humane policies. Legislation won’t pass overnight, if it even does at all, but we, both as a community and as individuals, can help in a variety of other ways.

First, if you are in a financial state to do so, consider offering a local homeless person the opportunity to stay at your home for a time. Naturally, this would require a certain level of trust among both parties, but given the chance to be fed and sheltered for a time can help give the individual the means of acquiring a more stable life once their residence passes. Help them to put in job applications, get them physically cleaned up and potentially cleaned up of drug habits, get them acclimated back into society, and help them find more stable and permanent housing. This is not an easy task to undertake, but if you have the will, commitment, and finances to make it happen, consider letting an unhoused person stay with you for a time. If this is something you are unwilling or unable to do, then stop for a second and give a few bucks to the next homeless person you drive past. They likely need the money more than you do.

Secondly, consider making donations to local organizations and charities.. If you have clothes that you don’t want or need anymore or food that you can spare, consider donating them to the local free stores in Manchester and Nashua, run by the NH MARF (Mutual Aid Relief Fund), with their stores in Dover, Manchester, Nashua, Concord and Rochester.

Lastly, end the stigmatization of homeless people. While many people reading this will be ahead of the curve on this front, there’s still a systematic dehumanization of unhoused people in our nation’s discourse. Many of our politicians associate homeless folks with filth, disease, crime, laziness and drugs. When our politicians and lawmakers use that language to imply that all homeless people live that way, it’s easy for them to sweep the issue under the rug and implement policies that ignore the needs of impoverished people for the sake of keeping a city ‘clean.’ And on the note of language, refrain from using words like ‘bum’ and ‘hobo’ to refer to people in situations beyond their control. Again, these are our fellow community members and we must look at them as such. It is all of our responsibility to uplift everyone in the community. When members of our community are suffering and there is no one to help them we are all suffering. If we want beautiful happy communities we cannot run off to the suburbs and hope the cops take away anyone who reminds us of our shame, we must build that community together by uplifting one another.

By chipping into our local communities and raising awareness, we can make a difference and change lives.

Sources:

https://www.nhceh.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-Edition-State-of-Homelessness-in-NH-Annual-Report-online-version.pdf

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-AHAR-Part-1.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/10/the-social-housing-secret-how-vienna-became-the-worlds-most-livable-city

https://nlihc.org/resource/impacts-trump-administration-executive-orders