29 August 2026
Where home prices outrun incomes, homelessness follows.
Many residents believe homelessness here is a story about poverty, addiction and untreated illness. Honolulu’s mayor wrote about it this month. The fifty-state numbers tell a simpler story: where homes cost more, more people are homeless.
Adjusting for cost of living, Alabama’s income per person is about the same as Hawaiʻi’s. Yet in the 2024 count, Alabama had about 5 people sleeping unsheltered per 10,000 residents, compared with about 28 in Hawaiʻi.
Poverty doesn’t really explain the pattern. Mississippi, the poorest state in the country, has one of the lowest street-homelessness rates. West Virginia, where homes are the cheapest in the nation and the opioid crisis hit hardest, runs about the same rate as Alabama.
What predicts a state’s street homelessness is the price of a home. Measure prices against local incomes and rank the states: the five priciest hold five of the eight worst spots. Among the five cheapest, street homelessness never reaches a fifth of Hawaiʻi’s rate.
| State | Home price-to-income ratio: rank (times local income) | Street homelessness: rank (per 10,000) |
|---|---|---|
| Five priciest housing markets | ||
| Hawaiʻi | #50 (8.7×) | #48 (28.2) |
| California | #49 (7.6×) | #49 (31.5) |
| Washington | #48 (6.1×) | #47 (20.5) |
| Colorado | #47 (5.9×) | #43 (8.0) |
| Oregon | #46 (5.8×) | #50 (33.3) |
| Five cheapest housing markets | ||
| West Virginia | #1 (2.8×) | #33 (4.5) |
| Iowa | #2 (3.0×) | #2 (1.4) |
| Mississippi | #3 (3.1×) | #7 (1.6) |
| Kansas | #4 (3.2×) | #23 (3.0) |
| Ohio | #5 (3.3×) | #12 (2.0) |
| Same income as Hawaiʻi, cheaper homes | ||
| Alabama | #12 (3.5×) | #36 (5.2) |
| Kentucky | #13 (3.5×) | #27 (3.7) |
| South Carolina | #25 (4.1×) | #24 (3.4) |
Ranks out of 50 states; as everywhere on this dashboard, #1 is best: the cheapest homes relative to local income, the least street homelessness. Values in parentheses: the home-price ratio (a typical home costs 8.7 times a typical income in Hawaiʻi, 2.8 in West Virginia) and street homeless per 10,000 residents, from the January 2024 count. US median: 3.5 per 10,000.
Researchers who tested the usual explanations, poverty, drugs, mental illness, weather, found those factors predict who becomes homeless, not how many people do. Housing markets set the how-many. A federal study found a $100 rent increase comes with about 9 percent more homelessness, after accounting for wages and poverty.
Warm weather doesn’t explain it either. Count people in shelters too, using HUD’s 2025 numbers, and the same pattern shows up. All ten of the priciest housing markets have more homelessness than the US median. Cold New York and Vermont are among the worst in the country. Winters change where people sleep, not how many are homeless.