We see homelessness around us every day, but we don’t have to accept it as the norm. We can and should work toward its abolition.
It wasn’t that long ago that homelessness in the United States was vanishingly rare. A 1990 paper by P.H. Rossi in American Psychologist started this way: “In the 1950s and 1960s homelessness declined to the point that researchers were predicting its virtual disappearance in the 1970s.”
Researchers’ prediction was not to be. A 2024 census — the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Point-In-Time report — counted over 770,000 homeless people in the United States in a single night.
The first step to creating our shared future is imagining it.
For Charlottesville Tomorrow’s 20th anniversary, we are inviting central Virginians to share their visions for the next 20 years.
Submit your Next 20 visionRSVP for the Oct. 4 Next 20 event
Here in Charlottesville, the sight of so many people sleeping on the Downtown Mall, in tents along the Rivanna River, or in parks or doorways, indicates that we’re losing the battle too. But in 20 years or even less, we can turn this back around…