Homelessness in the United States rose for a third straight year, the federal government reports, propelled by a sharp increase in California, a state that is struggling with stratospheric housing prices and being challenged by the Trump administration to take further action.
A decline in homelessness in 29 states, as well as the District of Columbia, was offset by a spike in California of 21,000 people, or 16.4 percent, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Friday — evidence that homelessness in the nation’s most populous state is “at a crisis level and needs to be addressed by local and state leaders with crisis-like urgency,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement.
California leaders and advocacy groups share federal officials’ alarm over the state’s outsize role in that trend. But there’s significant disagreement over how to tackle the issue as the president singles out cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles as problems, clashing with a liberal state that often fights his policies.