Homelessness in America, in one map

Hawaii is widely known as a beach paradise. But the state also has the worst rate of homelessness in the country.

Tim Henderson at Stateline, a Pew Charitable Trusts reporting outlet, compiled a map showing how homelessness stacks up in each state:

Hawaii topped the list, followed by New York and Nevada. On the other side, Mississippi, Virginia, and Indiana kept some of the lowest rates of homeless people relative to their overall populations.

There are various factors that explain why homelessness is more widespread in certain states. Hawaii and New York, for instance, have some of the highest housing costs in the country. Nevada, meanwhile, was hit hardest by the housing crisis and Great Recession, which cost millions of Americans their homes.

Recent policy experiments suggest that simply giving people housing may be the best way to combat homelessness, which afflicted roughly 610,000 Americans in one night of 2013.

Many places around the country are managing to bring down their homeless rates with relatively new strategies like “rapid rehousing,” which quickly places people in temporary homes when they’re on the edge of homelessness. The idea is that catching people before they actually become homeless will prevent the worst effects of living on the streets, such as health problems, emotional distress, risks to personal safety, difficulty finding jobs without a reliable address, or being stigmatized. Henderson at Stateline reported that this strategy helped Minnesota’s Hennepin County reduce its need for homeless shelters by 70 percent.

Other places have taken more sweeping solutions. Utah, for instance, offers homeless people permanent housing with no strings attached — and it’s reduced the number of chronically homeless people by nearly 72 percent since 2005, according to a state report.

Providing homes to the homeless in this way can actually save money. Lloyd Pendleton, director of Utah’s Homeless Task Force, estimated to Mother Jones’s Scott Carrier that the state’s program costs between $10,000 and $12,000 per person, which is nearly half of the $20,000 it would take to treat and care for a homeless person on the street. In 2014, the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness found it cost $10,000 per year to house someone in the region, compared with the $31,000 price tag of law enforcement, jails, hospitals, and other services needed to oversee homelessness.

It’s true these solutions won’t solve all the issues that cause homelessness, like a job that doesn’t pay well, drug addiction, or mental illness. But since homelessness is such a big problem by itself, just solving that issue can be a big step toward helping hundreds of thousands of people improve their lives.