We must protect Michigan's children against rising homelessness
Every child deserves a safe place to live and the opportunity to reach their full potential. But housing prices continue to rise and pandemic relief measures that aided families have expired. Homelessness is climbing: the U.S. set a record for homelessness in 2024, with children seeing the largest increase–39%–of any age group. Three new reports show that we have to do more to protect housing stability for Michigan families.
The Ending Homelessness in Michigan 2023 Annual Report counts the total number of people the state's homeless response system serves during the entire year. The national 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report is based on point-in-time (PIT) counts, which states conduct over a single night during the winter. The Schoolhouse Connections Data Profiles examine homelessness among children and youth during the school year.
Homelessness is devastating for kids by making it difficult for them to attend school and do their best. The chronic absenteeism rate for students experiencing homelessness is twice the rate for the state as a whole. Despite substantial improvements in Michigan's high school graduation rates over the past decade, unhoused students have been left out. Just 58%graduated on-time in 2023.
To make matters worse, President Donald Trump has proposed putting unhoused people in internment camps and jailing those who don't comply. At the same time, just a few short weeks into his second term, he's illegally sabotaging supports for struggling families, raising the costs of living with new tariffs, rescinded guidance protecting sensitive places like shelters and schools from immigration enforcement, and pushing other policies that will drive homelessness even higher.
After falling steadily following the Great Recession, homelessness increased again during the first Trump administration. It fell dramatically in Michigan during the first two years of the pandemic as emergency rental assistance, protections against eviction, and enhanced safety net programs helped families maintain economic security.
With the end of those measures, the state reports that more than 33,000 people in Michigan were literally homeless in 2023–an increase of 2%over 2022. ('Literally homeless' means a person lives in a shelter or a place not meant for human habitation.) Similarly, the national report shows that Michigan's 2024 PIT count grew by 9%.
Eclipsing both of those increases, homelessness among Michigan's schoolchildren rose by an alarming 15%. Nearly 33,000 pre K-12 students and another 10,000 kids age 3 and younger didn't have a safe, stable home during the 2022-2023 school year.
Children receiving special education were overrepresented, following a larger pattern of disproportionate homelessness among people with disabilities. This disparity reflects the higher costs of living for households that include disabled people, combined with school and workplace discrimination that limits opportunity for disabled kids and adults.
The reports show the continued impacts of racial injustice as well. Due to ongoing discrimination in education, employment and housing, Black and Indigenous people–including children–continue to experience homelessness disproportionately.
The reports also contain troubling findings about the impact in rural communities, where homelessness is less common but shelter access is limited–particularly for families with children. Rural kids are overrepresented among Michigan's unhoused students.
Homelessness affects children in every community. Fortunately, we know what works: increasing the housing supply; the Housing First approach (which recognizes that people need stable housing before they can address other needs); robust rental assistance; and strong tenant rights.
The Michigan League for Public Policy will continue fighting for these affordable housing solutions and more fundamental economic measures to improve families' security, such as maintaining critical safety net services, increasing the minimum wage, and expanding guaranteed basic income programs.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Washington Post
26 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Top US universities raced to become global campuses. Under Trump, it's becoming a liability
WASHINGTON — Three decades ago, foreign students at Harvard University accounted for just 11% of the total student body. Today, they account for 26%. Like other prestigious U.S. universities, Harvard for years has been cashing in on its global cache to recruit the world's best students. Now, the booming international enrollment has left colleges vulnerable to a new line of attack from President Donald Trump. The president has begun to use his control over the nation's borders as leverage in his fight to reshape American higher education. Trump's latest salvo against Harvard uses a broad federal law to bar foreign students from entering the country to attend the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His order applies only to Harvard, but it poses a threat to other universities his administration has targeted as hotbeds of liberalism in need of reform. It's rattling campuses under federal scrutiny, including Columbia University , where foreign students make up 40% of the campus. As the Trump administration stepped up reviews of new student visas last week, a group of Columbia faculty and alumni raised concerns over Trump's gatekeeping powers. 'Columbia's exposure to this 'stroke of pen' risk is uniquely high,' the Stand Columbia Society wrote in a newsletter. People from other countries made up about 6% of all college students in the U.S. in 2023, but they accounted for 27% of the eight schools in the Ivy League, according to an Associated Press analysis of Education Department data. Columbia's 40% was the largest concentration, followed by Harvard and Cornell at about 25%. Brown University had the smallest share at 20%. Other highly selective private universities have seen similar trends, including at Northeastern University and New York University, which each saw foreign enrollment double between 2013 and 2023. Growth at public universities has been more muted. Even at the 50 most selective public schools, foreign students account for about 11% of the student body. America's universities have been widening their doors to foreign students for decades, but the numbers shot upward starting around 2008, as Chinese students came to U.S. universities in rising numbers. It was part of a 'gold rush' in higher education, said William Brustein, who orchestrated the international expansion of several universities. 'Whether you were private or you were public, you had to be out in front in terms of being able to claim you were the most global university,' said Brustein, who led efforts at Ohio State University and West Virginia University. The race was driven in part by economics, he said. Foreign students typically aren't eligible for financial aid, and at some schools they pay two or three times the tuition rate charged to U.S. students. Colleges also were eyeing global rankings that gave schools a boost if they recruited larger numbers of foreign students and scholars, he said. But the expansion wasn't equal across all types of colleges — public universities often face pressure from state lawmakers to limit foreign enrollment and keep more seats open for state residents. Private universities don't face that pressure, and many aggressively recruited foreign students as their numbers of U.S. students stayed flat. The college-going rate among American students has changed little for decades, and some have been turned off on college by the rising costs and student debt loads. Proponents of international exchange say foreign students pour billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, and many go on to support the nation's tech industry and other fields in need of skilled workers. Most international students study the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math. In the Ivy League, most international growth has been at the graduate level, while undergraduate numbers have seen more modest increases. Foreign graduate students make up more than half the students at Harvard's government and design schools, along with five of Columbia's schools. The Ivy League has been able to outpace other schools in large part because of its reputation, Brustein said. He recalls trips to China and India, where he spoke with families that could recite where each Ivy League school sat in world rankings. 'That was the golden calf for these families. They really thought, 'If we could just get into these schools, the rest of our lives would be on easy street,'' he said. Last week, Trump said he thought Harvard should cap its foreign students to about 15%. 'We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can't get in because we have foreign students there,' Trump said at a news conference. The university called Trump's latest action banning entry into the country to attend Harvard 'yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard's First Amendment rights.' In a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's previous attempt to block international students at Harvard, the university said its foreign student population was the result of 'a painstaking, decades-long project' to attract the most qualified international students. Losing access to student visas would immediately harm the school's mission and reputation, it said. 'In our interconnected global economy,' the school said, 'a university that cannot welcome students from all corners of the world is at a competitive disadvantage.' ___ The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
Business Insider
27 minutes ago
- Business Insider
What A-list economists are saying about Trump's tax bill as Musk rebels against it
Elon Musk has departed his role as a "special government employee" in Trump's White House — and he's using his time outside the administration to hammer the GOP spending bill that's a cornerstone of the president's agenda. "This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination," Musk wrote on X earlier this week. Trump responded by saying Musk's criticism of the legislation is "disappointing." President Trump's tax bill will likely face a vote in the Senate in the coming weeks after passing the House in May. It would reduce the tax rates of lower-income workers, particularly those earning less than $107,200, and eliminate taxes on tips, social security, and overtime. The bill would also cut spending on social programs like Medicaid and SNAP benefits, which provide food assistance to low-income Americans. Like Musk, investors and economists are seemingly concerned that the bill will cause the national debt to balloon and further widen the US budget deficit. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said this week that it would grow the deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next decade . Trump and his allies have pushed back, arguing that higher economic growth from lower taxes would help boost government revenue. Here's what top economists are saying about the bill. Phillip L. Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office Despite the lower tax rates for low earners, Swagel said in a May 20 letter that the bill would negatively impact poorer Americans. "CBO estimates that household resources would decrease by an amount equal to about 2 percent of income in the lowest decile (tenth) of the income distribution in 2027 and 4 percent in 2033, mainly as a result of losses of in-kind transfers, such as Medicaid and SNAP," he wrote. "By contrast, resources would increase by an amount equal to 4 percent for households in the highest decile in 2027 and 2 percent in 2033, mainly because of reductions in the taxes they owe." William McBride, chief economist at the Tax Foundation McBride, along with several colleagues at the non-partisan Tax Foundation think tank, said in a May 23 report that while the bill would support economic growth, it wouldn't be enough to offset the revenue loss from tax cuts. "Our preliminary analysis finds the tax provisions included in the House-passed bill would increase long-run GDP by 0.8 percent," the report said. "The bill's tax and spending changes would increase the 10-year budget deficit by $2.6 trillion from 2025 through 2034 on a conventional basis before added interest costs. On a dynamic basis, accounting for economic growth, the deficit would increase by $1.7 trillion over ten years before interest costs." It continued: "The bill's tax provisions alone would reduce federal tax revenue by $4.1 trillion from 2025 through 2034 on a conventional basis before added interest costs. On a dynamic basis, accounting for economic growth, the revenue reduction would fall by nearly 22 percent to $3.2 trillion over 10 years before added interest costs." 6 Nobel Laureates Six Nobel Prize-winning economists — including Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Peter Diamond, Paul Krugman, Oliver Hart, and Joseph Stiglitz — said in a June 2 letter that the bill would worsen wealth inequality in the US. "The combination of cuts to key safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP and tax cuts disproportionately benefiting higher-income households means that the House budget constitutes an extremely large upward redistribution of income. Given how much this bill adds to the U.S. debt, it is shocking that it still imposes absolute losses on the bottom 40% of U.S households," the letter said. "The House bill addresses none of the nation's key economic challenges usefully and exacerbates many of them," it added. Ken Rogoff, professor of economics at Harvard University Rogoff, former chief economist at the IMF, cast doubt on the notion that the bill would boost growth in a piece for Project Syndicate this week. "Trump and his acolytes argue that his "big, beautiful bill" will supercharge economic growth, generating enough revenue to make up for sweeping tax cuts. But history offers little support for such claims," he wrote. "While both Democratic-led spending sprees and Republican-backed tax cuts have fueled the growth of US debt over the past two decades, tax reductions have accounted for the lion's share of the increase. Moreover, the notion that tax cuts pay for themselves was already discredited in the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan's tax cuts led to soaring deficits rather than self-sustaining growth." He added: "Will America's rising debt ultimately trigger a full-blown crisis? Perhaps, but a continued upward drift in long-term interest rates is more likely." Desmond Lachman, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute Lachman, a former IMF official who currently works for a conservative-leaning think tank, said in a June 4 post that rising bond yields, a declining dollar, and appreciating gold prices could be harbingers of an economic crisis brought on by Trump-driven policy volatility. Trump's tax bill is adding to investors' fears due to its inflationary implications. But one of its clauses undermines confidence in the reliability of the returns on Treasurys, he said. "That bill includes a clause that has to be sending shivers down foreign investors' spines. According to Section 899, the US Treasury can impose additional taxes of up to 20 percent on income earned by foreign entities from countries that enact taxes deemed 'unfair' to US interests."
New York Times
27 minutes ago
- New York Times
Live Updates: Trump-Musk Alliance Dissolves as They Hurl Personal Attacks
Pinned President Trump and Elon Musk's alliance dissolved into open acrimony on Thursday, as the two men hurled personal attacks at each other after the billionaire had unleashed broadsides against the president's signature domestic policy bill. While meeting with Friedrich Merz, Germany's new chancellor, in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump broke days of uncharacteristic silence and unloaded on Mr. Musk, who until last week was a top presidential adviser. 'I'm very disappointed in Elon,' Mr. Trump said. 'I've helped Elon a lot.' As the president criticized Mr. Musk, the billionaire responded in real time on X, the social media platform he owns. 'Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,' Mr. Musk wrote. 'Such ingratitude,' he added, taking credit for Mr. Trump's election in a way that he never has before. Mr. Musk had been careful in recent days to train his ire on Republicans in Congress, not Mr. Trump himself. But he discarded that caution on Thursday, ridiculing the president in a pattern familiar to the many previous Trump advisers who have fallen by the wayside. What started as simply a fight over the domestic policy bill sharply escalated in just a few hours. Within minutes of one another, Mr. Trump was making fun of Mr. Musk's unwillingness to wear makeup to cover a recent black eye, and Mr. Musk was raising questions about Mr. Trump's competency as president. The public break comes after a remarkable partnership between the two men. Mr. Musk deployed hundreds of millions of dollars to support Mr. Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. After Mr. Trump won, he gave Mr. Musk free rein to slash the federal work force. And just last week, Mr. Trump gave Mr. Musk a personal send-off in the Oval Office. The president praised Mr. Musk as 'one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced' and gave him a golden key emblazoned with the White House insignia. Mr. Musk promised to remain a 'friend and adviser to the president.' But now Mr. Musk, who has left his temporary role, has turned into the most prominent critic of a top presidential priority. Mr. Musk has lashed out against the far-reaching policy bill in numerous posts on X. He has called it a 'disgusting abomination,' argued that the bill would undo all the work he did to cut government spending and hinted that he would target Republican members of Congress who backed the legislation in next year's midterm elections. Mr. Trump on Thursday said Mr. Musk's criticism of the bill was entirely self-interested, saying he only opposed the legislation after Republicans took out the electric vehicle mandate, which would benefit Tesla, Mr. Musk's electric vehicle company. (Mr. Musk has previously called for an end to those subsidies.) The president also downplayed Mr. Musk's financial support for him during the campaign, arguing he would have won Pennsylvania without Mr. Musk, who poured much of his money and time into the critical battleground state. Mr. Musk also on Thursday rebutted Mr. Trump's statement that Mr. Musk 'knew the inner workings of the bill better than anybody sitting here.' 'False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!' Mr. Musk wrote, sharing a video of Mr. Trump saying he was disappointed in Mr. Musk.
