CINCINNATI — A record number of people in the Greater Cincinnati area are experiencing homelessness and more are living completely unsheltered, according to a press release from organizations in the region.
The release was issued by Our Daily Bread Soup Kitchen, the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition and Shelterhouse — all organizations and non-profits that seek to provide services, shelter and food in Cincinnati.
The organizations who penned the press release sent out Monday compared numbers of people experiencing homelessness in 2023 to 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic — but that year was not far off from Cincinnati city government's battles with tent cities and camps, which included a Hamilton County judge's countywide ban against homeless people sleeping outside.
That ban was partially overturned in December 2018 after an appeals court overruled the initial ban; the court ruled the judge had a right to ban camps on public property, but couldn't stop private property owners from hosting them as one Over-the-Rhine park had attempted to do.
While tent cities may not be as visible in Cincinnati as they were in 2018, when city officials felt the need to address them, organizations that advocate for those experiencing homelessness said the need is even greater now.
Our Daily Bread, Cincinnati's largest soup kitchen, said meal numbers needed from the organization are 30% higher now than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2019.
In February 2023, additional benefits that had been provided to SNAP recipients throughout the pandemic were halted, just as inflation and the cost of food climbed significantly. Last year, Freestore Foodbank said it was seeing skyrocketing demand at its food pantry.
Between February and the summer months, Kam McKenzie, SNAP outreach manager for the food bank, said the Liberty Street pantry was seeing 940 more families per month. She estimated the demand was roughly 27% higher than it had been in June of 2022.
Now, on top of that, families who are relying on organizations like Our Daily Bread and Freestore Foodbank are also more likely to be living without a roof over their heads each day, according to the press release sent Monday.
Our Daily Bread said in 2019, around 56% of people coming to the soup kitchen for assistance were experiencing homelessness. In 2023, that amount rose to 70%, the organization said.
"More concerning, of their guests experiencing homelessness, 40% reported being unsheltered and living in camps, cars or other unsafe places," reads the press release.
That could be because shelters are also seeing a sharp increase in demand for space.
Arlene Nolan, executive director of Shelterhouse, said demand on all their shelters — those for single women, for single men and their emergency winter shelter — have been high.
"The number of residents in shelter can fluctuate, but Shelterhouse's numbers have reached unprecedented highs and have stayed there, serving upwards of 180 people per night in the emergency winter shelter alone," reads the press release.
According to the Cincinnati Homeless Coalition, one in three Cincinnatians cannot afford their current home. The release cites an article from WVXU reporting the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University found in 2022 that renters in the U.S. were forced to pay more than 30% of their income to rent.
That same report says homelessness rates in the entire U.S. hit a record high in 2023.
Josh Spring, executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition, said the organization honored 169 people in the community who died in 2023 as a result of experiencing homelessness. The average age those 169 people lived to was just 55, according to the press release, but the youngest among them was "not yet 3 months old."
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