ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the explosion of modern homelessness in the USA from the 1980s to the present day as the result of deliberate policy choices by national and local officials as well as structural racism. It documents the unfortunate trend of communities criminalizing the essential survival activities of unhoused persons rather than addressing the underlying causes of homelessness. The chapter identifies future challenges to homelessness and opportunities for prevention. It ultimately concludes that the United States stands at a tipping point where advocacy for housing to be implemented as a fundamental human right is at its strongest point in decades, but the politics of fear and division are being actively stoked, with the fate of unhoused and unstably housed persons hanging in the balance.
