“No American should face homelessness,” reads the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s news release accompanying the January 2024 Point-In-Time Count Report.

Yes, the data is a year old, but each year’s snapshot gives us a better understanding of how many in our communities are facing just that.

During the look at the number of individuals in shelters, temporary housing and unsheltered settings, researchers found more than 770,000 people were experiencing homelessness on that one night in January. That was an 18% increase from the same point-in-time in 2023.

HUD agency head Adrianne Todman pointed out this movement in the wrong direction means “it is critical that we focus on evidence-based efforts to prevent and end homelessness.”

Some success has already been found among a particular group of people, as veteran homelessness has been reduced by 55.2% since 2010 (with lots of help from the Department of Veterans Affairs). But what works for the population as a whole?

In Chester County, Pennsylvania, there has been a nearly 60% decrease in homelessness since 2019. Efforts include eviction prevention case resolution, expansion of housing-first training programs, increases in affordable housing groups and fair housing education and prevention efforts.

Closer to home, the report showed that overall homelessness in Ohio during that one night in January 2024 was 11,759. At the same time, the bed inventory in the Buckeye State through HUD 2024 Continuum of Care Homeless Assistance Programs was 9,442 chronic (permanent supportive housing) beds, 4,405 veteran beds and 967 youth beds.

Unless a major change has taken place over the past year, there is significant work to be done on that front.

Communities willing to acknowledge there is a problem to begin with, and that they CAN do something that will truly help these human beings, must start by taking advantage of state and federal resources. They must look to other communities and figure out whether what works there will work here. Incentivizing affordable housing while making quality mental health care and addiction services more accessible are a good start.

Easier said than done for the majority of us who are warm in our beds each evening.

That is all the more reason it is up to US to reverse the trend for those who are not.