U.S. Homelessness Spiked by Jaw-Dropping Amount in 2024

Homelessness in the United States is soaring, increasing 18.1 percent in 2024 after a 12 percent increase the year prior. Natural disasters, inadequate options for migrants, and a devastating lack of affordable housing are the primary catalysts. 

There are now 770,000 homeless individuals in the United States, according to data collected by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in January of this year. This number does not include those who are transient—like those couch surfing and staying with friends or family.   

There are some troubling developments within this data. For one, Black Americans are sorely overrepresented, making up just 12 percent of the country but 32 percent of the homeless population. Family homelessness also spiked by nearly 40 percent, particularly in cities that saw larger waves of migrants, like Denver, Chicago, and New York City. Almost 150,000 children were homeless on any given night in 2024, a shocking 33 percent increase from 2023. And the destructive Maui wildfire left over 5,000 in homeless shelters. 

This is a damning development for a country that boasts to be the greatest on earth. And it comes as communities large and small, liberal and conservative, grow more and more hostile towards their homeless neighbors, many of whom are already battling with mental illness. The Supreme Court ruling that allowed cities to ban sleeping outside has empowered classic liberal strongholds like San Francisco and Portland to start clearing homeless encampments, as they simply move the problem somewhere else rather than solve it. 

“Increased homelessness is the tragic, yet predictable, consequence of underinvesting in the resources and protections that help people find and maintain safe, affordable housing,” said Renee Willis, incoming interim CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “As advocates, researchers, and people with lived experience have warned, the number of people experiencing homelessness continues to increase as more people struggle to afford sky-high housing costs.”

Expect even more hostility from President-elect Trump this upcoming term, as he has floated institutionalizing the homeless population. “The homeless have no right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place for them to squat and do drugs,” he said in a 2023 campaign video.

Steve Bannon has joined the MAGA war between hard-line immigration opponents and tech executives like Elon Musk, taking the side of xenophobia on his War Room show Friday.

“H-1B visas? That’s not what it’s about. It’s about taking American jobs and bringing over essentially what have become indentured servants at lower wages,” the former Trump adviser turned pundit said, referring to the visa program that allows immigrants in specialized fields to work in the United States temporarily. 

“This thing’s a scam by the oligarchs in Silicon Valley to basically take jobs from American citizens, give them to what become indentured servants from foreign countries, and then pay ‘em less. Simple. To let them in through the golden door,” Bannon added. 

Musk set off the MAGA faithful on social media on Wednesday morning, posting on X about how more foreign tech workers need to be allowed to work in the United States because “there is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent.” Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sidekick, generated his own backlash from the right Thursday by suggesting American culture was to blame for why employers seek tech employees from overseas.

Many on the right disagreed vehemently, particularly racists like Laura Loomer, who spent most of Thursday on her X account attacking Musk and tech executives who share his views. Musk then retaliated against Loomer and his other MAGA friends turned critics that evening, allegedly censoring them on the platform by removing their verification badges and hurting their engagement.  

Neither side is right on the issue, though. Bannon, Loomer, and other anti-immigration conservatives are motivated by nativism and racism in their opposition to foreign tech workers, and tech CEOs like Musk seek low-wage immigrants to work for long hours in their companies instead of American workers who don’t have a fragile visa status hanging over their heads.

Trump has yet to weigh in on this new controversy, and in the past advocated for green cards for foreign college graduates in the U.S. before his campaign retracted the proposal. However, his past immigration policies have been xenophobic, racist, and cruel, and he’s pledged to implement a mass deportation program for undocumented immigrants. Where does he stand now?

The GOP has eliminated a critical government agency fighting disinformation just in time for Trump’s second term.

The State Department’s Global Engagement Center, responsible for leading efforts to combat foreign disinformation, was shut down this week after Republican lawmakers at the last minute removed its funding from the spending bill to avert a government shutdown.

The GEC is a spin-off of an Obama-era creation, the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications. Obama signed an executive order to make the GEC an official body in 2016. Since then, the center has tracked things like Russian and Chinese Covid-19 conspiracy theories and accused the Kremlin of trying to destabilize U.S. influence domestically and abroad. 

But the GEC has been under fire since billionaire Elon Musk called it “the worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation.” Shortly after that, Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee members began to call for its closure, claiming that it was censoring conservative voices and choosing to partner with liberal NGOs.  

The effort to close the GEC, which only has a $60 million budget, is deeply troubling in a time of deeply pervasive misinformation. 

“[The GEC] has played an indispensable role in combating Russian and Chinese disinformation,” Senator Chris Murphy said in October while trying to save the center. “It would unnecessarily undermine U.S. national security if we eliminated this tool.”

Despite still being on holiday break, some Republicans are not in the giving mood when it comes to House Speaker Mike Johnson.

On Thursday, Representative Andy Harris, who chairs the far-right House Freedom Caucus, told Fox Business that Republicans need to think about whether their current leadership “is what we need.”

“Before the last couple of weeks, I was in his corner, but now we should consider what’s the best path forward,” Harris said about Johnson. “We do need to consider whether—if we’re going to advance Mr. Trump’s agenda—whether the current leadership is what we need.”

On Friday, Representative Thomas Massie also expressed a lack of confidence in Johnson’s leadership in a post on X, saying that he “will vote for someone other than Mike Johnson.”

“I’m not persuaded by the ‘hurry up and elect him so we can certify the election on J6’ argument,” Massie’s post said, referring to the certification of the 2024 election set to take place on January 6, 2025. “A weak legislative branch, beholden to the swamp, will not be able to achieve the mandate voters gave Trump and Congress in November.”

Last week, Harris said in a statement that he was “now undecided on what House leadership should look like in the 119th Congress,” possibly signaling that the Freedom Caucus may lead the charge in unseating and replacing Johnson when the new Congress is sworn in. If this is the case, then who would replace Johnson as the new speaker?

Earlier this year, Harris floated Representative Jim Jordan as a possible candidate, while outspoken Republicans like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Rand Paul have made an outlandish call for Elon Musk to take over the speakership. In this Republican Party, however, another crazy leadership shake-up is not out of the question.

The only person to be in charge of both the CIA and FBI wants everyone to know that Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel don’t have what it takes to do the job.

William Webster, who is literally 100 years old, took the time to write a letter to the Senate to outline just how bad Patel and Gabbard would be as FBI head and director of national intelligence, respectively.

“His record of executing the president’s directives suggest a loyalty to individuals rather than the rule of law—a dangerous precedent for an agency tasked with impartial enforcement of justice,” Webster said of Patel.

He went on to say that Gabbard had “a profound lack” of experience with the intelligence community.

“Effective management of our intelligence community requires unparalleled expertise to navigate the complexities of global threats and to maintain the trust of allied nations,” Webster penned. “Without that trust, our ability to safeguard sensitive secrets and collaborate internationally is severely diminished.”

“I urge you to weigh the critical importance of nonpartisan leadership and experience,” he concluded. “The safety of the American people—and your own families—depends on it.”

Webster headed the FBI from 1978 to 1987 and the CIA from 1987 to 1991.