Moving Towards Home: Strategies for Ending Homelessness in Ten Years
City of Burlington, Vermont
February 2004

People are homeless because work doesn't pay enough to cover the cost of housing, food, health care and other necessary living expenses.

"The incidence of teachers and public safety officers spending more than half their income on housing doubled between 1993 and 1996, from 6.8 percent to 14.6 percent."

The State of the Nation's Housing, Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, June 2003.

In the last quarter century, wage earnings have not kept up with increasing housing costs. Inflation-adjusted household income for those in the bottom two-fifths, nationally, has been essentially flat since 1975. Meanwhile, home prices and rents have continued to rise faster than general price inflation.[23]

• Between 1990 and 2000, four out of five Vermont households were able to buy less as their earnings did not keep up with inflation.[24]

Currently, there is no state in the nation in which a person working at minimum wage can afford (using the federal standard of affordability) to rent an efficiency apartment.[25]

Even where a housing subsidy is available, it does not always solve housing problems. According to HUD, 1.3 million households that receive some sort of housing assistance still have a severe rent burden - i.e., are spending more than 50% of their income on housing.[26]

36% of those forced to seek food at the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf are employed. 22% of the parents in homeless families seeking emergency shelter at the Committee on Temporary Shelter have a job.

A single parent with one child would have to earn $18.72 an hour, with employer-paid benefits, to cover basic living expenses in the Burlington area. The highest average hourly earnings for production workers and nonsupervisory employees in any industry, statewide, in 2002 was $17.90.[27]

• In Vermont, only around 1 in 5 single parents (with one child) is earning enough to support their family's basic needs. Even with two parents working (and with two children), around one-third of Vermont families are still not earning a livable wage.[28]
• Families make up the difference by going without (i.e., giving up health care), getting help from other family members, working more than one job, relying on some form of private (i.e., Food Shelf) assistance, or depending on credit (with resultant high interest rates on accumulated debt and, too often, ruined credit histories).
• The Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf now sees four times as many requests for assistance as it did in 1981, and is now serving 4,527 county households (2,317 Burlington households) a year. Most of those people are using the Food Shelf as a regular source of food. 36% are employed. 15% are homeless. 15% are disabled.
• Many families live close to the edge of meeting their housing costs each month - and any disruption (job loss, family break-up, birth of another child) leaves them vulnerable to homelessness.

To close the gap between their income and the cost of basic needs, many wage earners - and most of those who are unable to work or transitioning to work - must rely on public systems for medical care, job training, education, mental health treatment, child care, substance abuse treatment, transportation and many other services. Those systems are almost uniformly overburdened, and - given current revenue resources - can only fall further behind.

For families and individuals struggling to pay the rent, a serious illness or disability can start a downward spiral into homelessness, beginning with a lost job, depletion of savings to pay for care, and eventual eviction. In 2000, approximately 38.7 million Americans had no health care insurance. Nearly a third of persons living in poverty had no health insurance of any kind. The coverage held by many others would not carry them through a catastrophic illness.[29]

Many of the homeless have exhausted the help that family and friends could offer. Others never had much family support, or a social network, to start with. Either way, their "social capital" is limited. 

Rog and Holupka, Reconnecting Homeless Individuals and Families to the Community, The 1998 Symposium on Homelessness Research.

Most studies show that over 90% of the homeless have held jobs in the past. Some - perhaps as many as 40% - are currently working, either in regular or casual jobs.[30]

• 22% of the adults in homeless families served last year by the Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS) were employed at the time they requested shelter.
• 10% of the homeless single adults served by COTS last year were employed at the time they requested shelter. Over the course of the last year, 43% of single adults served by COTS worked at day labor, a temporary job or a permanent job.
• Of the 122 youth sheltered by Spectrum Youth & Family Services this past year, 88 had jobs - mostly obtained while in shelter, but some held at the time the youth was forced to seek shelter.

The homeless often have multiple barriers to employment - and particularly to livable employment. Job turnover/loss is predictably high, and wage income typically low.[31]

• Programs that cut off benefits when a person starts to work and/or that make it hard to regain benefits once dropped will discourage employment efforts.
• Frequently, disadvantaged trainees will take one or more steps back for every two forward. Programs that train the hardest to serve should be held accountable for outcomes, but they cannot be judged the same as programs that serve individuals with fewer barriers.
• Employment earnings must be supplemented and opportunities for higher wage levels increased.

The state Department of Employment & Training is subject to successful outcome requirements and limited/restricted funding, which promote risk aversion and make it easier to fund training for laid off IBM workers (high wage earners) than for at-risk individuals in need of job training. While there is some logic to this on one level, there is also a strong argument that high wage earners may have a greater ability to find work without government assistance.

Non-degree grants are an important source of funding that allows individuals to obtain skills and training. However, the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation frequently runs out of funds and is not able to provide non-degree grants.

Page last updated March 5, 2004