When we think of homelessness, we often think of someone sitting under a high-traffic bridge, someone sleeping inside a busy tunnel, or someone living on the streets of a bustling metropolis. In other words, people commonly consider homelessness to be an urban problem and they attribute homelessness to be an issue of the cities. However, smaller communities and rural populations are not free from the homelessness crisis. There is a large group outside of America’s urban areas, whom researchers often refer to as “the hidden homeless.” People experiencing rural homelessness often live in the “woods, campgrounds, cars, abandoned farm buildings” and other places that are “not intended for habitation,” according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Many of the factors that are responsible for urban homelessness are also the ones that contribute to rural homelessness. On a previous blog post, I discussed increasing rents in New York City and its role in rising homeless numbers. The same is true for rural areas; the lack of affordable housing, along with inadequate income, has been a driving force for homelessness. Like denser parts of the country, rural America has faced increased housing costs, especially over the past decade. In addition, median household incomes are lower for rural populations, and, consequently, they face greater rates of poverty. The poverty rate is 14.5% for the United States as a whole, while in rural areas the number is 16.1%. In addition, the National Alliance to End Homelessness reported that “64% of rural counties had high child poverty in 2010.” Therefore, although rural homeless groups are generally unheard of, and we as a society don’t really give them much attention, the issue of homelessness exists in rural communities just as much as it does in urban areas, if not more.