How many people live in the United States?

However, modern homelessness as we know it, started as a result of the economic stresses in society, reduction in the availability of affordable housing, such as SROs, for poorer people. In the United States, in the late 1970s, the deinstitutionalisation of patients from state psychiatric hospitals was a precipitating factor which seeded the homeless population, especially in urban areas such as New York City.