Myths and Realities
True or False: Most people experiencing houselessness are lazy and don’t want to work.
What is False?
Many unhoused individuals work or are actively seeking work.
Veterans make up about this percentage of the adult homeless population in the United States, despite being a smaller share of the general population.
What is approximately 11%?
Economists call this gap between what low-income renters can afford to pay and the actual cost of housing a key driver of homelessness nationwide.
What is the affordable housing gap (or housing affordability crisis)?
True or False: Some college students experience houselessness while going to school.
What is True?
Project Lux takes its name from the Latin word for this, symbolizing hope, visibility, and bringing awareness to those living in the shadows of houselessness.
What is light?
What is the most common cause of houselessness in the U.S.?
What is lack of affordable housing?
This mental health condition, prevalent among homeless veterans due to combat trauma, is a significant barrier to seeking shelter and services.
What is PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)?
This city consistently ranks highest for unsheltered houselessness in the U.S.
What is Los Angeles?
This term describes students who temporarily live with relatives or friends due to loss of housing, the most common form of student homelessness and often invisible to schools.
What is doubling up (staying with others temporarily)?
This is the only U.S. state whose name can be typed on a single row of a QWERTY keyboard.
What is Alaska?
Women and children represent one of the fastest-growing groups experiencing houselessness, making up roughly this percentage of the homeless population in the U.S.
What is approximately 30–40% (families with children)?
Children are the fastest-growing group among people experiencing homelessness; on any given night in America, roughly this many children sleep without a stable home.
What is approximately 200,000 children?
This economic concept describes when rising incomes in a neighborhood push out lower-income residents, contributing to houselessness in surrounding areas.
What is gentrification?
Researchers estimate that roughly this percentage of college students in the U.S. have experienced housing insecurity in the past year.
What is approximately 36–40%?
This country shares borders with the most other nations in the world, touching 14 different countries.
What is China?
This percentage of people experiencing houselessness in the U.S. are unsheltered (i.e., not in shelters).
What is about 40%?
What federal department works on reducing veteran houselessness?
What is the Department of Veterans Affairs or VA.
Studies show that this housing-first approach (providing permanent housing without preconditions) is more cost-effective than emergency shelter because it reduces spending in these categories/destinations.
What is emergency room visits, jail stays, and crisis services?
This term describes college students who stay in cars, shelters, or on friends’ couches.
What is couch-surfing (or housing insecure)?
This was the first genetically engineered organism.
What is a tobacco plant?
The myth that people just need to 'try harder' to find housing ignores a key economic reality: in every U.S. state, a minimum-wage worker must work more than this many hours per week to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment.
What is 40 hours (in fact, often 80–100+ hours in high-cost states)?
What is $300-$500 a month?
This percentage of extremely low-income renters spend more than half their income on rent.
What is over 70%?
Under this federal law, K-12 students who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence are entitled to immediate school enrollment and support services.
What is the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act?
Trees in a forest communicate and share nutrients with one another through an underground network of fungi attached to their roots. Scientists have nicknamed this the "wood wide web," but its technical name is this.
What is a mycorrhizal network?