Homeless people a permanent place to live: Homeless people’s health conditions that vary from those of other disadvantaged people are strongly linked to their state of homelessness. Homelessness is a health risk that predisposes individuals to a host of health conditions and complicates counseling.

Income level: There are two aspects of the problem of affordable housing: the availability of housing at a given price is on the one hand; the sum of money an individual or family needs to pay rent is on the other. For those who are eligible, neither jobs at the new minimum wage nor welfare insurance provides enough money for them to secure affordable accommodation in certain neighborhoods.

Ensuring access to health care for homeless people: It is also not only administratively inefficient and bureaucratically cumbersome, but often ethically difficult for those who administer or support health care programs to expand health care services to the vulnerable while attempting to refuse them to the domiciled disadvantaged.

Short term solution: The desire for housing and food urgently and desperately has overridden efforts to devise and enforce strategies that could include any long-term alternatives. What is required now, in the Committee’s opinion, is preparation and intervention at the federal, state, and local levels to organize and ensure the quality of effective homeless programs and accommodation.