In addition to the hardships caused by the pandemic, other factors influencing rates of homelessness across the nation include a lack of affordable housing and increasing costs of living coupled with largely stagnant wages and a growing number of people struggling with addiction and mental health problems. has grown for four consecutive years, according to HUD’s 2020 Annual Homeless Assessment Report.Įxperts say it will take years to fully understand how the pandemic has impacted homelessness, but there is a consensus that the pandemic has exacerbated the problem through higher unemployment rates, housing crises and more generally, forced economic disruption. Even before the pandemic, the homeless population in the U.S. There are many reasons homelessness is becoming more prevalent in Tucson and throughout the country. (This year’s survey was scheduled for this week, but with the Omicron variant driving COVID cases to new highs, it was Last year, TPCH was unable to do a PIT count for the unsheltered homeless population in the Tucson area due to safety concerns associated with the pandemic, but city officials say the number of people experiencing homelessness in the community has continued to increase in 2021. While it has been widely recognized that PIT counts tend to undercount the number of people experiencing homelessness in a given community, they still offer important insights into the humanitarian crisis unfolding right in our own backyard. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Annual Homeless Assessment report, which seeks to capture an estimate of the total number of homeless Americans in the United States. This data is collected in communities throughout the county and compiled in the U.S. It typically takes place on one night during the last 10 days in January. The PIT count, which is facilitated by the Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness-a local coalition that serves as the Continuum of Care for Tucson and Pima County-is an attempted count of the number of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness in the community. While various government entities and nonprofit organizations are working to help get people off the streets, the problem continues to persist raising questions about what is actually needed to build lasting solutions to homelessness in Tucson.įrom 2019 to 2020, the number of unsheltered homeless individuals in Tucson-people sleeping in their cars or on the streets-increased by 60 percent, according to the data collected during an annual Point in Time count. In the last three years alone, different departments within the city of Tucson, Pima County and the state of Arizona have spent more than a million dollars cleaning up the remnants of homeless encampments in the Tucson area. Meanwhile, the municipal costs associated with homeless camps in the city have also increased. Since 2019, the homeless population in Tucson has steadily grown, and the demand for social services has increased along with it. And then people will see you doing that, and automatically, you’re no good because you’re doing it.”Ĭasalvera is just one of a growing number of people who can’t find a place to live. If you can’t get a job, you have to go in a dumpster to get an article of clothing-maybe to go to that interview-because you don’t have the money to buy something to wear. “Even though you know what you do every day and what you try to accomplish. “I can see the looks that you get from people, and it makes you just feel so worthless sometimes,” said Casalvera. She sets up camps, but on more than one occasion, city officials have given her 72 hours to pack up her belongings and move along. She was evicted.Ĭasalvera, 49, has been unable to find a new place to live with an eviction on her record, so she joined Tucson’s growing ranks of homeless people. Tina Casalvera became homeless in 2019 after she lost her job at Walmart and was unable to pay her rent on time.
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