April 28, 2025
April 28, 2025
This article was originally published by Non Profit Quarterly
In Minneapolis, MN, licensed clinical social workers, like Andrea Hansen-Miller, work in one of the city’s public libraries. By handing out transit passes and having granola bars and laundry detergent pods on hand, Hansen-Miller gets unhoused people from around the city through the library’s doors.
As Hansen-Miller told The New Yorker, “It gets them in here….Then I can ask, ‘Where are you staying at night?’” Inside the library, she does what she can to help people, from listening to and validating their struggles to finding them affordable housing—and much in between.
But libraries, which are often overstretched and fighting to maintain funding, can’t do everything that’s needed to address homelessness, especially as the climate crisis worsens already difficult situations.
As of December 2022, almost 1.9 million US households had been displaced within just the previous year alone due to a natural disaster, according to data from the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. One-third of those people were renters, who are more likely than homeowners to be displaced for longer periods of time. As the report states, “Only 56 percent of renter households returned home in less than a month compared to 71 percent of homeowner households. Nearly one in four renter households never returned home compared to one in 10 homeowner households.”
Regardless of renting or owning, BIPOC households were more likely to be displaced than White households, and low-income households were three times as likely to be displaced as well. In 2023, an estimated 2.5 million Americans were forced from their homes due to disasters. That’s in addition to the more than 580,000 people who already experience homelessness on any given night across the United States, according to the US Interagency Council on Homelessness.
Because unhoused people spend long periods of time outdoors, it’s harder for them to receive public health alerts about upcoming weather events. People may not have consistent access to phones, TV, or internet that provide life-saving weather alerts and urgent instructions.
In general, surviving the impacts of climate disasters—from wildfires and poor air quality to flooding, severe storms, and extreme temperatures—are harder for those without stable shelter. People without housing face increased danger in the event of a disaster as well as in the aftermath, when access to potable water may be difficult, power lines may be down, and air may be unsafe.
At the same time, communities around the country are struggling to afford the staggering costs and staffing needs of emergency shelters. As a 2016 fact sheet from the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives notes, the “cost of an emergency shelter bed funded by HUD’s Emergency Shelter Grants program is approximately $8,067 more than the average annual cost of a federal housing subsidy.”
Of course, it’s more than just the direct impact of weathering a natural disaster that can thrust people into homelessness. Climate change is poised to wipe out nearly $1.5 trillion in US home values by 2055 according to a recent report by First Street Technology, a research firm that studies climate threats to housing. More houses are becoming unhabitable, more land unlivable.
In the meantime, the cost of maintaining ownership and insurance for homes across the nation is rising. An increase in the risks posed by escalating weather events is partly responsible for a 33.8 percent increase in insurance rates that took place between 2018 and 2023, according to CNBC. The S&P Global Market Intelligence’s RateWatch app found that 2023 alone accounted for 11.3 percent of that rise.
Then there’s also the squeeze on rental availability to contend with. Just three days after the deadly Los Angeles wildfires destroyed Ryan and Stephanie Blank’s home in January, The Washington Post reported, the couple stood in line for a rental home showing. The home came with a monthly rent advertised at $7,200—more than double their mortgage.
They didn’t get the house.
What can nonprofit organizations and other groups do to help?
Before the second Trump administration took hold, a cadre of federal funding sources could be accessed, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Public Assistance Program; the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Recovery Resources to Provide Housing and Services to Persons Experiencing Homelessness; and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Grants, Funding and Technical Assistance. These federal funding sources are now in limbo or gone entirely.
One thing organizations can do is think beyond shelters. Costanza Rampini is an associate professor at San Jose State University who studies the impact of climate change and solutions. She and her research team were joined by researchers from the University of California, Davis to conduct surveys of people who are unhoused and live by urban streams in parts of the Bay Area.
