When pandemic rental funding and protections ended rents soared across the country and many people became homeless for the first time. Kansas tenants can help change the situation, writes Kendra Bozarth. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
No one was harder hit by the recent two-week, below-freezing winter storm than unhoused people throughout the United States . In Kansas, it’s reported that at least two people died, including a young woman and her dog who were found near a local hospital in Lawrence.
Jenn Wolsey, the city’s former homeless programs coordinator, shared that no one should “die unhoused in the cold in a place that continues to report having all the services in the world,” according to the Lawrence Times.
Amid worsening climate change, the coldest season of the year isn’t the only life-threatening one, as proved by last year’s unprecedented heat wave .
In the U.S., the incidence of homelessness has peaked in the past two years, reaching a new record in 2022, which is largely attributed to the federal government’s rollback of pandemic assistance, and marking another 12 percent increase in 2023 due to an “extraordinarily challenging” rental economy , according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.