WEEK 5: Those Who Don’t Know History Are Destined to Repeat It
Over the past few weeks, I've written about the complexity of homelessness—why congregate shelters aren't a solution for everyone, why creative approaches matter, and why the data we track doesn't always capture the full reality of the problem.
Underneath all of it is a more fundamental question: How did we get here, and why is homelessness so hard to fix?
The housing crisis didn't appear overnight. It was built slowly and predictably over decades.
After World War II, homeownership became one of the primary ways Americans built stability and wealth. The national homeownership rate surged, and housing became the backbone of the American middle class. But access to that opportunity was never equal. Discriminatory policies like redlining systematically blocked many families of color from accessing mortgages and investment. Entire neighborhoods were deemed "too risky" based largely on race and were denied the capital needed to grow and thrive.
Even the GI Bill—often credited with building the postwar middle class—was implemented in ways that excluded many veterans of color. While the benefits technically applied to all veterans, local administration allowed segregation and discrimination to limit access to college education and federally backed home loans in many communities.
Many of the neighborhoods with the highest eviction and homelessness rates today overlap almost exactly with the areas that were redlined. The lack of investment wasn't accidental, and its effects didn't disappear with time. Those early decisions shaped who could build wealth through housing and who was locked out from the start.
As cities grew, housing supply failed to keep pace with demand, and in many places, the rules actively worked against building more.
In Los Angeles, for example, roughly 70% of residential land has long been zoned exclusively for single-family homes. Density is pushed into a limited number of neighborhoods, driving prices higher everywhere else.
Meanwhile, wages haven't kept up with rent. Healthcare costs continue to rise. This is why a single disruption—a rent increase, a medical bill, or a job loss—can push a household into crisis.
Survey studies that ask people directly about their finances show that 62–67% of Americans self-report living paycheck to paycheck, with little or no margin for error.
We're asking emergency systems to compensate for a housing shortage they were never designed to solve.
Understanding this history helps clarify what actually works.
One of the most effective and least visible solutions is prevention. In many cities, short-term emergency rental assistance of just a few thousand dollars has been enough to stop an eviction and keep families housed. That small intervention often costs far less than a shelter stay or the years of instability that can follow displacement.
And even then, housing alone is sometimes not enough. Next week, I'll explore how access to healthcare, mental health services, and long-term care for aging or disabled loved ones shapes whether housing is sustainable once it's secured.
When those systems fail—or don't exist—housing instability becomes harder to prevent and harder to resolve.
Until we close the housing gap and address these connected systems, homelessness will remain less about individual failure and more about structural math.
Thanks for reading,
Josiah Haken
City Relief, CEO
