BILOXI –– “Betty” has been on the Gulf Coast for three years. Her journey away from her hometown of Fourt Collins, Colorado, began when she and her mother lost their home.

“We lost my grandma, and we lost everything. We had a house, but then we just became homeless. (My mother) wanted to travel, so we took her to Louisiana and Alabama and Florida and all that. Then we came back this way, and then she got sick on us on the way back,” she said.

After living out of a car, Betty’s mother passed away last year, leaving her stranded on the coast with no family, no resources and few options.

“Being on the streets was kind of difficult. I got in depression, got stressed out losing my mom, so I went into the hard drugs,” she said.

An increasingly mobile homeless population

 While on the coast, Betty has seen new faces among the homeless population.

“Some are coming in from California, some are coming from Florida, Alabama. There was one lady here –– she’s from Alaska. So, we’re coming from everywhere to try to get help to get off the streets,” she said.

One place to seek help is Back Bay Mission, where Betty receives meals, clothes and showers. Director James Pennington said the mission sees roughly eight new faces a week, and since he took over four years ago, the number of people without homes served at the day center has surged.

“My feeling is, yes, there’s been an increase in homelessness,” Pennington said.  “They’re coming from other places to here and they’re getting stuck here, or they’re losing their housing, or their opportunity for housing.”

Kirsten Hebron, a case manager at Back Bay Mission, said many homeless people catch a Greyhound bus to south Mississippi, lured by false promises of job opportunities or support services.

“The weather is nicer down here most of the time, more job opportunities, especially if they’re coming from a small town,” Hebron said. “We’ve had people come here who are promised a job, promised a place to stay by someone they knew, and they get here and they’re ghosted –– and then they’re stuck.”

As more people arrive seeking stability, homelessness in the area has drawn closer scrutiny. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Point-in-Time Count, which tracks the number of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January, recorded just over 1,000 people experiencing homelessness in 2024 –– one of the lowest numbers in the country. At the time of publication, results for the 2025 count had not yet been released.

Despite the lower count, Justin Brooks, president of the South Mississippi Housing Authority, said the region lacks adequate services to support those in need. He joined the 2025 PIT count initiative and expects an increase, partly due to recent homeless relocation efforts in New Orleans.

Housing challenges and policy responses

About a third of Back Bay Mission’s funding is sourced from Mississippi Home Corporation and HUD grants. The mission’s “By Name” waitlist is now between 200 and 300 people long.

“But in all these programs, we only have so many spots, and there are only so many spots on the coast. The ‘By Name’ List has grown, which means, yes, there’s an increase in homelessness on the coast,” Pennington said. “Those that are the most vulnerable are at the top of the list. So, what happens if you’re homeless, you’re vulnerable, you have mental health issues, you have substance abuse issues, but you’re not one of the most vulnerable? Then you slip down the list. We need more resources, more housing, more housing programs, overnight shelter.”

In response to the growing demand, the South Mississippi Housing Initiative launched in December, offering 250 housing choice vouchers for unsheltered people most in need of supportive housing.

“Permanent supportive housing is a decades-old concept where we provide permanent housing that’s stable for the homeless population. We get them housed first, and then we have the ability to surround them with whatever supportive services are necessary to break cycles of addiction and break generational cycles of poverty, to address mental health disparities and other issues,” Brooks said. “It’s a foundational level of service that we are absolutely lacking in south Mississippi.”

Recognizing the need for additional services, Brooks is also working with Gulfport officials and other partners to establish a new homeless day center that would provide food, showers, lockers and other essential resources.

“In south Mississippi, especially along the coast, we’ve got a notable homeless population, but ultimately, we’re lacking several of the foundational services to be able to respond,” Brooks said. “Sometimes just getting access to a state-issued ID can help someone get their life back. We need a day center where we can, ultimately, holistically apply all of those services to the homeless population and hopefully begin to see some success stories.”

Compounding these challenges, uncertainty at the federal level has further complicated efforts to support the growing homeless population. Pennington said funding for least one program has been delayed, and there has been little communication from state and federal agencies, leaving service providers like Back Bay Mission in limbo.

Criminalization of homelessness

 Inflation and increasing costs of basic needs are pushing more Mississippians toward homelessness, Brooks said.

“What we know in America is that about two-thirds of all households are two missed paychecks away from being in an eviction situation or foreclosure situation, and ultimately, we know that instability leads to homelessness,” Brooks said.

Betty, now nine months sober, has applied for a housing voucher and is among about 40 people in the program’s process. Once approved, she must still find a viable place to use the voucher. Until then, she said she has no safe place to sleep since south Mississippi has very few overnight homeless shelters –– many of which have limited capacity.

“A lot of these people are getting arrested because they’re homeless and they’re living on the streets and not living in spots that we should be. But where can we go? There’s nowhere for us to sleep,” she said. “Saturday through Saturday, I wake up at 5:30 every morning so the cops don’t stop us and arrest us for trespassing.”

Robert Myers, who has experienced homelessness for 13 years, recently secured public housing but has seen more than a dozen encampments removed by authorities in recent months.

Efforts to remove these encampments aren’t just local. House Bill 1203, recently passed in the Mississippi Legislature, would prohibit camping on undesignated property, making it punishable by a fine –– legislation mirroring what is in place in other states.

“The goal is to obviously encourage those who are sleeping on the street to go to shelters or other resource centers,” Rep. Shanda Yates, an independent representing Jackson, told Mississippi Today. “None of us feel that those who are sleeping on the street are getting resources or help that they need. There’s nothing on the street to help anybody there.”

Pennington believes many legislators and the public don’t understand the difficulty of escaping homelessness.

“I think people that don’t do this work see unsheltered people that are camping as an eyesore, especially here in this community because we’re supposedly a vacation destination. I think they don’t realize how many barriers there are, and to say, ‘Yeah, we don’t want people camping in our public places.’ Well, where are they going to go? Are we going to criminalize them?

“(Legislators) think the churches and the public should take care of these unsheltered people. I would say to them, if you have a spare bedroom in your house, open it up to an unsheltered person. Experience it for yourself. (This bill) criminalizes homelessness,” Pennington continued.

“It’s a societal issue. It’s a humane issue. It’s an issue of our culture, of our haves and have nots. Once you get in that cycle of being unhoused, unsheltered, it’s really, really difficult to get out. I think if people understand the stories, that will help change that, that paradigm from, “We’re going to criminalize this,’ to ‘We’re going to find ways to help solve homelessness,'” Pennington said. “It’s a poverty of compassion, I think, in our country.”

Myers, who found housing in 2016, knows homelessness doesn’t just affect individuals –– it affects communities.

“Once, an interviewer asked me what being housed meant to me. I explained to him it meant my life,” Myers said. “I said, ‘Sir, I think your question is incorrect. You should ask me what it means to this community that I’m housed.’ It means that you can go to work and not see me on the street corner flying a sign. It means that you can go to the park with your children and not have me sitting there. It means you can enjoy your life. That’s what it means for me to have a home.”