; Whereas emergency shelters, transitional housing programs, permanent supportive housing initiatives, and rapid rehousing programs are inadequately funded and unable to keep up with the constant demand to provide adequate temporary, transitional, or permanent housing for unhoused individuals; Whereas the cost of maintaining an unhoused population places undue financial burden on taxpayers of an amount between $30,000 and $50,000 each year for each chronically unhoused person because of the costs of incarceration, medical treatments, jails, detention centers, psychiatric and rehabilitation institutions, congregate shelter that does not lead to permanent housing, law enforcement costs of encampment cleanups and evictions, and the criminalization of unhoused people; Whereas there are nearly 16,000,000 vacant homes in the United States that are available to house individuals and families, and the cost to end the unhoused crisis is at least $20,000,000,000, nearly 2 percent of the 2024 fiscal year defense budget of $886,300,000,000; Whereas a lack of political will at the Federal, State, and local levels of government drastically restricts the amount of funding available for States, counties, cities, and municipalities to provide services and resources to unhoused communities; and Whereas addressing the roots of the housing affordability crisis requires a sustained commitment to investing in new affordable, accessible housing, preserving affordable rental homes that already exist, bridging the gap between incomes and rent through universal rental assistance, providing emergency assistance to stabilize renters when they experience financial shocks, and establishing strong renter protections: Now, therefore, be it