Mom, Kids, & Nowhere to Go: Family homelessness is spiking just as the Trump administration rolls back social services.

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/2026/04/13/apr-2026-magazine-mom-kids-nowhere-to-go-family-homelessness/


Credit: Steven Senn/AP Photo

Families are one of the fastest-growing segments of the homeless population, but they are rarely acknowledged in the larger policy conversation about homelessness in the U.S. Instead of living on the street, they’re often out of sight, staying with other family members or living in their cars. People don’t truly notice them the way they see chronically homeless individuals living on the street, people who work with homeless families say. “You often see the chronic street homeless who suffer from mental illness because it is more in your face … [Families] end up doubled up in situations and we just don’t end up counting them as homeless,” said Peter Jacob, executive director of Family Promise Union County in New Jersey.

Unhoused families, like everyone else who is unhoused, are facing renewed financial pressures as social programs and housing support that was already woefully insufficient is stripped down under the Trump administration and wages fail to keep up with the hefty cost of apartments. But they also have to contend with the higher costs of supporting kids, like finding an apartment with more bedrooms or paying for child care. Families who can’t afford child care are often penalized with underemployment and financial instability that also puts them at risk of eviction, workers at groups serving homeless families explained. Jacob said it’s time that policymakers prioritize family homelessness as much as other forms of individual chronic homelessness. During the 2022-2023 school year, public schools identified nearly 1.4 million homeless students, which was a 14 percent rise from the previous school year.

But schools are likely under-identifying the number of kids who are homeless. From 2023 to 2024, families with children had the biggest year-over-year increase in homelessness compared to any other group. Research completed in 2023 from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, which used Census Bureau data from between 2007 and 2016, found that kids represent 4 out of every 10 people who face eviction each year. More than 10 percent of kids under five who live in rental housing are threatened with eviction annually, and 5.7 percent actually get evicted from their homes. Juan Pablo Garnham, communication and policy engagement manager at Eviction Lab, said that evictions fall disproportionately on Black single mothers and that the data on eviction characteristics tends to be pretty stubborn. “Even though in New York City and Philadelphia we’re seeing positive changes, in general, this data from a few years ago is likely to stay the same,” he said.

Homelessness appeared to fall in the final year of the Biden administration, based on samples of the January 2025 homeless count. But while the Trump economy is not cratering, it has been stagnant, particularly at the lower end of the income scale. The economy added very few jobs last year, electricity prices are out of control, and GDP growth in the first half of the year was driven almost entirely by data centers and information technology. In the longer run, homelessness remains historically high, as Americans have been watching the dream of even a modest life slip away in recent years. The median age of a first-time homebuyer rose to 40, an all-time high since the National Association of Realtors began its annual survey. Nearly half of the 42.5 million renter households spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs in 2023. And the growth in health care spending from 2023 to 2024 has outpaced the growth rate of the 2010s. The cost of child care is more expensive than rent for many families.

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[leftstreet]

1. DURec

[erronis]

2. A powerful article. So many families and individuals are uncounted and unserved.