Slate Voice

The Department of Housing and Urban Development this week reports that homelessness has ticked up by just under 1 percent, to 553,742 Americans sleeping outside or in shelters. It’s the first national increase in nearly a decade, driven almost entirely by individuals living on the streets of California cities like Los Angeles, where homelessness rose 26 percent since last year. Family homelessness, by contrast, fell by 10,000, and has fallen 10 percent in two years.