Rural communities lack resources, plans for dealing with the homeless

They may be harder to spot than their urban counterparts, but thousands of rural folks don't have a place to call home. 

"Rural America has nearly 29 million homes, but experts say that’s not enough to house the roughly 46 million people who live there," reports Kristi Eaton for Barn Raiser. A Housing Assistance Council report that analyzed data from 2010 to 2023 concluded that “rural America is losing affordable housing at an alarming rate, fueling a growing housing crisis." A lack of affordable rural rental property is adding to the problem.

Even when rural residents find a home, high mortgage or monthly rental costs can take up a big percentage of their income. Eaton explains, "The report found that over 5.6 million people, or about a quarter of rural households, pay more than 30% of their monthly income on housing costs, and less than half of rural homeowners own their houses outright."

With rural housing in short supply and home ownership or rental costs beyond the reach of many, rural homelessness has become more prevalent and its solutions harder to come by. Liam Niemeyer of the Kentucky Lantern shares the story of Mallie Luken as an example of what homelessness can look like in rural America. 

Neimeyer begins Luken's story as many homeless stories begin -- with the local police attempting to manage homelessness without needed resources. He writes, "Pastor Jennifer Banks was still a relative newcomer to this Western Kentucky town on the night in September when she watched through a security camera as a police officer brought a woman in a wheelchair to the church and 'dumped her in our parking lot.'"

Pastor Banks recognized the woman. Banks had met Luken the day before at an Arby's parking lot where she'd given Luken a plate of food and they prayed together. Now police were bringing her to her church's parking lot. Banks told Neimeyer, “I had to leave her there [in the Arbys's parking lot] because I didn’t have anywhere for her to go. And then the next day was when they dumped her in our parking lot."

Luken and her faithful dog, Blaze.
(Photo by Austin Anthony, Ky. Lantern)

Luken hadn't planned on being homeless or sleeping in parking lots. Neimeyer explains, "Luken, 70, a widow, was down to her last few dollars. She had asked her former pastor to drive her from the nearby county where she was living to Muhlenberg County because she remembered an old ad for the Central Inn, a motel in Central City, and thought she could afford a night there."

Luken didn't make it to the Central Inn and ended up sleeping in parking lots, despite several people knowing she didn't have a place to stay. Neimeyer reports, "Banks’ community was ill-prepared to respond to that kind of housing emergency. That realization has served as a catalyst for the Bankses and others in Muhlenberg County who want to fill gaps they see in services and housing. They have met resistance and support. . ."

To read more about Luken's story and how Muhlenberg County is grappling with homelessness services, click here.

In flood-torn Appalachia, building or rebuilding housing is a complex problem with a long history

Percentage of renters considered housing cost-burdened.
(The Conversation map, from U.S. Census 2023 data)

As parts of Appalachia are left ravaged by more than one “thousand-year flood," residents remain in their communities, but many people still can't find housing or rebuild, writes Kristina P. Brant for The Conversation. "The floods have highlighted the resilience of local people to work together for collective survival in rural Appalachia. But they have also exposed the deep vulnerability of communities, many of which are located along creeks at the base of hills and mountains with poor emergency warning systems."

Persistent poverty, a lack of decent housing and a history of unequal land ownership leave many Appalachian residents with few options when faced with a natural disaster. Brant explains, "When I first moved to eastern Kentucky in 2016, I was struck by the grave lack of affordable, quality housing. I met families paying $200-$300 a month for a small plot to put a mobile home. Others lived in 'found housing' – often-distressed properties owned by family members."

Eastern Kentucky’s 2021 and 2022 floods "turned this into a full-blown housing crisis, with 9,000 homes damaged or destroyed in the 2022 flood alone," Brant writes. "With a dearth of affordable rentals pre-flood, renters who lost their homes had no place to go. And those living in 'found housing' were not eligible for federal support for rebuilding."

Corporations own large tracts of Appalachian land that could be used for housing, but the property remains undeveloped. Other large parcels are "owned by families with deep roots in the region. People’s attachment to a place often makes them want to stay in their communities, even after disasters," Brant adds. "But it can also limit the amount of land available for rebuilding. People are often hesitant to sell land that holds deep significance for their families, even if they are not living there themselves."

Even after major government funding was secured to rebuild on "higher ground" after the 2022 flood the extreme housing shortage continues. Brandt writes, "When I conducted interviews during the summer and fall of 2024, many of the mobile home communities that were decimated in the 2022 flood had begun to fill back up. These were flood-risk areas, but there was simply no other place to go."

Could sleeping in a public park be a crime? A decision about the nation's homelessness crisis goes to the Supreme Court

The Grants Pass decision could change how homelessness
is handled by communities. (Adobe Stock photo)

As the number of homeless people in the U.S. continues to climb, many communities face conflicts over homeless campers and encampments. The rural town of Grants Pass, Oregon, "has become the unlikely face of the nation's homelessness crisis," reports Claire Rush of The Associated Press. The fate of the town's anti-camping laws is in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard the case on April 22. 

Grants Pass, like many communities, has "struggled for years with a burgeoning homeless population. A decade ago, City Council members discussed how to make it 'uncomfortable enough. . . in our city so they will want to move on down the road,'" Rush explains. "From 2013 to 2018, the city issued 500 citations for camping or sleeping in public, including in vehicles, with fines that could reach hundreds of dollars."

The Supreme Court's decision hinges on their review of a 2018 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which blocked anti-camping laws for individuals as violations of the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment." Rush reports, "Officials across the political spectrum — from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in California, which has nearly 30% of the nation's homeless population, to a group of 22 conservative-led states — have filed briefs in the case, saying lower court rulings have hamstrung their ability to deal with encampments."

Homeless people and advocates insist that more housing is the answer to homelessness, not citations and punitive actions. "Civil rights groups and attorneys for the homeless residents who challenged the restrictions in 2018 insist people shouldn't be punished for lacking housing," Rush explains. "Grants Pass has just one overnight shelter for adults, the Gospel Rescue Mission. It has 138 beds, but rules including attendance at daily Christian services, no alcohol, drugs or smoking and no pets mean many won't stay there."

At the heart of the problem in Grants Pass is the encampments found along the town's scenic public parks that frame the Rogue River. "They host everything from annual boat-racing festivals to Easter egg hunts and summer concerts," Rush reports. "They're also the sites of encampments blighted by illegal drug use and crime, including a shooting at a park last year that left one person dead."

For details on the case's oral arguments, click here and here. The Supreme Court's decision is expected by the end of June.

The U.S. needs 7 million more houses, but who will build them? The construction industry needs trained laborers.

Photo by Arron Coi, Unsplash

As the construction industry struggles to meet the demand for new housing, it faces big obstacles, including a shortage of trained labor. Robbie Sequeira of Stateline reports, "The U.S. construction industry lost nearly 30% of its workforce during the Great Recession of 2008 and had barely recovered before the Covid-19 pandemic hit it again, as outlined by a study shared last spring by economists at the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin. . . . However, the authors attributed much of the shortage to the federal Secure Communities immigration crackdown of the Obama administration."

An estimated 7 million more homes are needed, so the industry must find more trained workers to meet demand. "Employment isn't growing fast enough, said Erika Walter, director of media relations for Associated Builders and Contractors, a national industry group," Sequiera writes. "An analysis released earlier this month by the group found that at the end of November, there were about 459,000 job openings in the industry. The 5.4% job opening rate was the highest since 2000."

To attract new labor, the industry needs to address its hiring practices. Sequeira reports, "According to a 2022 Department of Labor report, many apprentice programs for construction and trade-based skills often have sponsors who do not recruit or hire individuals from underrepresented groups — and may not even be aware of how to recruit members of those groups."

If recruitment and training shortages aren't managed, the shortage will intensify as aging workers retire. Sequiera notes, "More than 1 in 5 construction workers are 55 and older, and much of the workforce will be retiring in the coming decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics." Karl Eckhart, vice president of intergovernmental affairs for the National Association of Home Builders, told Sequiera, "We need to expedite the [recruitment and training] process so we can at least get shovels under the ground."

Several states are intervening to assist in training a new construction workforce, including Montana, New York, Ohio and Maryland. "Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine announced that 35 Ohio high school programs would receive almost $200 million in grant money to expand training facilities in areas including the electrical trades, welding and carpentry," Sequiera reports. 

Delving into rural homelessness, an anthropologist's new book takes an in-depth look at this often-hidden issue

Families on the Edge was published August 15.
(Photo from MIT Press via The Daily Yonder)

Homelessness looks different depending on where you live. In the case of rural homelessness, it's often hidden, complex and surprisingly prevalent. Author and researcher Elizabeth Carpenter-Song is a medical and psychological anthropologist who has studied homelessness for more than a decade. Her new book Families on the Edge: Experiences of Homelessness and Care in Rural New England is an "ethnographic study of housing insecurity in an under-studied region," reports Olivia Weeks of The Daily Yonder. A condensed version of Weeks' question-and-answer interview with Carpenter-Song is shared below.

What are the most important differences in experiences of rural and urban homelessness?
Homelessness in urban areas of the U.S. is much more visible. In many American cities, it is common to see and interact with people who may be unhoused. . . . In our rural towns and villages in New England, there are encampments of unhoused people, but these tend to be out of sight. People experiencing homelessness in rural areas . . . may camp in the woods, sleep in cars, or double-up with friends or family for periods of time.

In the context of families, which was the focus of my research, parents go to great lengths to avoid literal homelessness with their kids and, as a result, move frequently between different settings to access shelter. In rural areas, challenges related to housing are compounded by transportation challenges when people move to more remote towns to gain access to more affordable housing. But, this places people at risk of being isolated from support networks and creates challenges for finding employment and meeting basic needs within small rural towns.

Are there any commonalities that might seem surprising to an outsider?
The main commonality between experiences of homelessness in rural and urban areas is that homelessness is a housing problem. As a society, we are now experiencing the consequences of decades of underinvestment in affordable housing. Runaway real estate valuations and high costs of living, coupled with a lack of adequate housing stock, have created a common scenario across the U.S. in which safe and affordable housing is out of reach for more and more people.

You outline this problem in the book in which, as housing gets cheaper in your subject area, it inevitably gets further from crucial services and opportunities. Are there any good models for reversing that trend? Do you know of any small towns that have become more walkable or developed more reliable public transportation networks?
This is one of the big challenges we face in rural areas. In the book, I advocate for increasing housing density closer to town centers to mitigate transportation challenges and create more opportunities for accessing services and being integrated in the community. In the region I write about, the towns of Lebanon, New Hampshire and White River Junction, Vermont, are good examples of efforts to have mixed-use residential and commercial space, greater housing density, walkable downtown areas, and access to the local free bus service.

It is important to note that these two towns are relatively larger than many of the small villages in rural New England and are proximate to the major centers of employment in the region. Yet, I think these two settings can still serve as useful examples of how to create vibrant and accessible town centers in a rural region.

Reporters suffer hard times, too; sharing them with readers can make connections through our common humanity

Many reporters have experienced unemployment
and homelessness. (Photo from PovertyUSA)

For journalistic integrity, reporters train to suppress their personal views when addressing a topic. But in uncertain times, many reporters have lived their own versions of trauma, such as homelessness or addiction, and they have shared their experiences with their audiences as part of an unfolding story of shared humanity, reports Bob Sillick of Editor & Publisher. "Because of the severe contraction of the news industry and the uncertainty of working as a freelancer, some journalists have experienced poverty and food insecurity. Becoming part of the story is often critical to their articles being published. The financial and distribution support of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project is helping those journalists recover from the trauma of being without a job and sometimes homeless."

Alissa Quart, executive director of EHRP, told Sillick, "For some of our pieces, the journalists report about hard times they've experienced. Many accomplished journalists have had to receive food stamps and unemployment or have been homeless." Sillick reports, "Lori Yearwood is one of those journalists who have lived through crises. She was an enterprise reporter with The Miami Herald for seven years. . . A series of traumatic circumstances caused her to become unhoused for two years. After she found a place to live, she started to freelance for EHRP . . . becoming a team member and reclaiming her position as a full-time reporter again." Yearwood told Sillick, "Instead of writing only from the perspective of the victim, who is often portrayed as being solely disempowered, I emphasize the more comprehensive story about the coping mechanisms and the resilience that it takes to negotiate these horrendous circumstances in which people find themselves."

Anne Elizabeth Moore is another EHRP-supported journalist who, after years of professional writing, had an extreme health crisis. She told Sillick, "I experienced a quite severe and financially devastating illness. I applied for an award from an organization that was giving free houses to low-income writers in a permanent residency program." Moore used her experience to grapple with her situation. "What's tricky writing about poverty is so much of our culture doesn't allow for honesty about economic security. You must pay very close attention to identifying those who are struggling financially. Have a conversation with people experiencing poverty, but not in a judgmental way."

Sillick recommends adding humanity to any reporter's quiver of writing tools. He writes: "Reducing poverty and food insecurity to numbers can cause everyone to lose sight of the human stories and the circumstances those people must endure." Still, Sillick offers some "baseline" numbers:

• In primary families with children younger than 6, 16.1% were in poverty, and 15% in those with children younger than 18.
• According to the Agriculture Department, 10.2% of all U.S. households were defined as "food insecure" in 2021. Approximately four percent had very low food security. That number rose to 6.2% in those families with children.
• Food insecurity in Black and Hispanic households was greater than for all households, or 19.8% and 16.2%, respectively.

Volunteers in W. Ky. county see homelessness up close as they try to help, and their weekly newspaper reports on it

Trash litters the area surrounding a homeless encampment near
near Drakesboro, Kentucky (Photo by Stacie Barton, Leader-News)

Rolling hills dotted with striking bald cypresses and homelessness. In Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, that's what food-pantry workers encountered on their stop in Drakesboro, reports Stacie Barton of the Leader-News, a local weekly. "Up on a hill overlooking U.S. Highway 431, two people in their mid-40s are living in a badly worn tent. The tent is missing its poles and was laying almost flat on the couple as they emerged to greet Scott Casebier and Debra Gorham, volunteers from Hope2All Food Pantry. They were delivering food and checking in to see if they could help in any way."

There are many reasons homelessness happens, "Mary has been on disability since childhood, but at some point fell out of the system. Scotty seemed unwilling to relive the series of events that landed him here. The two have no income at all," Barton writes. "There is a low cinderblock building people at the food pantry call the 'chicken houses.' It has been divided into three units, which are rented out to people as a place to live. . . .The chicken houses are reported to have no running water, no toilets, and only one unit has electricity. . . . Mary had lived in the chicken houses but was unable to pay the $300 in rent to stay there, so she has been living outdoors for about six months."

Barton reports, "A 16-year-old boy lives at the Central Motel in Central City with his mother, aunt and adult cousin. The four of them live in one room with only one bed. Brayden is in high school and works a job to provide for his family. . . . Brayden catches the school bus around the corner. He's lived at the motel for around five months. . . . At the other end of the motel, a young family of five is living in a room with two queen beds. There are little tricycles and a bike with training wheels sitting outside the door, and the room is tidy. Brianna is doing her best. . . . Her husband has a job at a nearby coal mine. . . . His income makes them ineligible for food stamps, Brianna said."

Casebier travels from Drakesboro to Powderly along his pantry delivery route, "There are camp trailers, storage sheds, and homes with boarded up windows," Barton writes. "Casebier said working at the pantry has shed a light on people living in precarious places around the community." He told Barton, "Being a pastor, down through the years, we help people through our churches and know it exists. But not until I got with Hope2All did I realize the needs." Barton reports, "The food pantry sends roughly 800 boxes of food home with Muhlenberg County residents each month, which are meant to feed a household. Each week, the pantry sees 20-30 new families who qualify for food assistance come through the line, which snakes around the block. Dozens more are delivered to people without transportation."

Casebier told Barton, “We have people who come to our food pantry that live like the rest of us, but then something happens." Barton writes, "Casebier wraps up his visit with Scotty and Mary by asking them if they need anything. He’ll purchase a new tent and air mattress for them, and offers to put them up in a motel for a night or two. Mary declines the offer. She said it might sound funny, but she’s gotten used to living outdoors."