How Psychology Can Help Build Housing Justice

Across cities and towns in the U.S., shelter is increasingly out of reach (Harvard, 2025). The nation is currently short at least two million homes (deRitis et al., 2025), and many individuals with roofs over their heads are at risk of becoming unhoused; half of renters nationwide are cost-burdened by rent, and a quarter spend at least 50 percent of their income on rent. These numbers are even higher for racially marginalized households (U.S. Census Bureau, 2024).

3 Insights From Psychology

While housing justice is often framed as an economic issue, psychology offers crucial insights into why it matters and how we can support it. Psychological science, particularly community, health, and social psychology, helps illuminate how safe and affordable housing is an essential foundation for life.

1. Social and Structural Conditions Shape Individual Outcomes

Dominant cultural narratives often suggest that homelessness results from personal failure or poor choices (Polner, 2019), but the empirical evidence tells a different story. Research shows that housing insecurity and homelessness are linked to systemic forces, including wage stagnation, racial discrimination, and policy decisions made decades ago (Colburn, 2022). For example, communities affected by redlining continue to face generational impacts (Gerken et al., 2023), and rental inquiries with names signaling African American identity receive fewer positive responses from landlords than those with White-sounding names (Carpusor & Loges, 2006).

Importantly, psychology also reveals the toll of housing insecurity on people’s well-being. Housing insecurity and homelessness can be stressful, humiliating, exhausting, traumatic, and dangerous (Adams et al., 2024; APA, 2011). A child frequently uprooted doesn’t just lose housing; they lose continuity in school, friendships, and safety, which can affect long-term emotional and cognitive development (Gaylord et al., 2021).

Homeless man holding sign reading "seeking human kindness"

Source: Matt Collamer / Unsplash

2. Stories Activate Empathy and Action

To change hearts and minds, psychological scientists can collect and elevate stories grounded in lived experience. Methods like photo-elicitation, participatory research, and qualitative interviews can help document what it’s actually like to navigate housing precarity. Questions as simple as “Where do you sleep?” or “How do you wash?” humanize experiences that are otherwise invisible or misrepresented. And reading about people’s lived experiences can improve empathic concern, perspective-taking, and attitudes (Bientzle et al., 2024).

When we view people experiencing homelessness as “others,” it becomes easier to support punitive policies, but when we are immersed in their experiences, empathy develops, and stigma breaks down. In one study, participants who underwent a virtual reality “becoming homeless” perspective-taking exercise reported more enduring positive attitudes toward people experiencing homelessness and were more likely to take a supportive action (e.g., signing a petition) compared to those who only engaged in traditional perspective-taking (Herrera et al., 2018).

3. Knowledge Is Most Powerful When Shared

One of psychology’s most important contributions to housing justice is not expertise, but collaboration. Rather than positioning scientists as top-down problem solvers, community psychology embraces partnership with those on the ground, including organizers, service providers, and impacted individuals (Bond et al., 2017).

This shift is about humility, effectiveness, and accuracy. When psychologists show up as co-researchers or “scribes”—gathering data, amplifying voices, documenting systemic patterns—they help build credibility and capacity while centering those most affected. The goal isn’t to translate experience into science but to honor and strengthen it. As Professor of Societal Psychology, Dr. Darrin Hodgetts, puts it, this is about “frenetic knowledge,” or the practical wisdom people carry from living within broken systems, and the creative ways they survive and resist them.

3 Ways Psychology Can Support Housing Justice

So what can psychological science, and those who practice or teach it, do to support housing justice?

1. Use Your Platform

Academics and mental health professionals often hold cultural and institutional credibility. Use that platform to advocate, educate, and challenge false narratives. This includes writing Op-Eds, speaking at city councils, or publishing in accessible formats.

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2. Pair Quantitative Data With Stories

It’s important to include qualitative evidence and human voices as data alongside quantitative statistics and figures. Whether in research, teaching, or therapy, integrating lived experience helps ground abstract concepts in reality and invites more inclusive solutions.

3. Build Coalitions, Not Silos

Rather than working in isolation, psychologists can embed themselves within communities, nonprofits, and service systems. Research shows that homelessness is a complex, dynamic system, and coordinated responses (across multiple sectors and stakeholders) are essential for progress (Fowler et al., 2019).

Final Word

Housing is not just an economic issue; it’s a psychological one, touching everything from mental health to social and cultural stigma. And while systems created this crisis, systems can also undo it. Psychology has a role to play by listening, documenting, and standing in solidarity.