Our community is in the throes of a homelessness epidemic.

All of the shelters in Miami-Dade County are full. Desperate people with no place to spend the night are regularly told to call back later by overburdened outreach workers who have no housing to offer — sometimes for days on end. The Homeless Trust is to be commended for its decision to provide temporary housing in motels to households with children when the shelters are full. Unfortunately, homelessness has been increasing so fast that there are now more than 60 families living in motels.

The primary cause of this upsurge in homelessness is economic. The unfortunate reality is that 18 percent of Miami-Dade County’s families with minor children live on income below the poverty level. The most recent U.S. Census Bureau data show that 157,000 of Miami-Dade County’s 810,000 households subsist on annual incomes of less than $15,000 per year — the gross income of a person working full time at the minimum wage, and another 107,000 households live on income between $15,000 and $25,000 a year.

None of these households are able to afford the fair-market rent of more than $800 a month for an efficiency apartment in Miami-Dade County, let alone a one- or two-bedroom. For years, as these households have paid 65 percent or more of their modest incomes for a place to live and struggled mightily to pay for their other needs, our community has fallen short on the actions necessary to address their dire economic situation. Our unemployment rate has remained in the double digits for 30 months. Therefore it should be no surprise that families are falling into homelessness in record numbers.

The underlying cause for the crisis is longstanding: the need for affordable housing for our lowest income households. The first thing that most people think of when confronted with these grim statistics is that most of these households qualify for some sort of housing assistance. Unfortunately this is not the case. The latest Miami-Dade County Housing Assistance data show that there are fewer than 27,000 households in Miami-Dade County that either live in public housing or are assisted by housing vouchers (Section 8).

In addition, almost all of the affordable housing constructed by private developers with federal, state and local government money is geared to households with income above $30,000 per year. Housing sufficient to meet the needs of lower income individuals and families is not being constructed in sufficient numbers. A review of subsidized affordable rental housing constructed in Miami-Dade County in the 10-year period between 1997 and 2006 showed that only 250 of the 14,260 units constructed were affordable to households with income of $15,000 per year, and only 1,404 units were affordable to those with income between $15,000 and $25,000.

Given the limited number of units of subsidized housing constructed for the 264,000 households with income below $25,000 per year and the fact that there are fewer than 27,000 public housing and Section 8 vouchers in Miami-Dade County, it is safe to conclude that at least 230,000 of these households (more than one in every four of the county’s households) receive no housing assistance and subsist on income so low that they must exert great efforts each month to pay their rent and still meet their other needs.

But the current dire economy has brought many of them to their knees. As a community, we can no longer ignore their plight.

In 2008, the federal government created the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program (HPRP) as part of the Economic Recovery Act. This temporary program safeguarded a large number of households that would have become homeless during the economic downturn by providing rental assistance to keep them in their existing housing or rapidly re-housing them. As noted in a January 2012 report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, The State of Homelessness in America, HPRP resulted in a decrease in homeless counts in many parts of the nation, including Miami-Dade.

However, the $12.5 million awarded to our county and its municipalities is now nearly exhausted, and homelessness is increasing. Recently, the federal government awarded another $446,000 to Miami-Dade County to help families on the verge of homelessness meet their rental obligations, and the Homeless Trust will provide another $200,000 in match. But this will only assist around 150,000 households on a temporary basis.

Our community needs a more lasting solution. The Miami Coalition for the Homeless calls for a collaborative community effort to combine our collective resourcefulness, map out a plan, and take the actions necessary to bring this crisis under control by ensuring an adequate supply of affordable housing for our most needy households.

Barbara “Bobbie” Ibarra is executive director of The Miami Coalition for the Homeless.