Despite strides being made in the United States to solve homelessness, for the first time in many years, more are experiencing it for the first time than Lucas County can serve, said Michael Hart, executive director of the Lucas County Homelessness Board.
“Since 2010, there’s only been a 3 percent increase of homelessness nationwide,” Mr. Hart said. “From 2022 to 2023, there was a 12 percent increase in that year alone … the numbers are definitely going up.”
“We used to see agencies with rental assistance, utility assistance, and those have dried to a small dribble in the community,” said Sandra De Steno, 211 director for United Way of Greater Toledo.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the federal government decided more needed to be done about homelessness because of a substantial increase at the time, Mr. Hart said.
“The focus then, and really through the early 2000s, was on shelter, transitional housing,” he said. “It was around providing emergency support for people experiencing homelessness.”