Housing shortages leading to increasingly high rents and mortgages, in addition to mental illness and drug abuse, have contributed to California's 16% homelessness surge to 151,000, according to NBC News.

"The state's severe housing shortage that has forced rents to increase at twice the rate of the national average and put the median price of a single family home at $615,000, has also contributed to the crisis," NBC News reported.

Social programs offering affordable housing and job training are all but maxed out, leaving those vulnerable to becoming homeless, according to The People Concern's John Maceri.

"You reap what you sow," Maceri told NBC News.

The homelessness increase is a result of "decades and decades of failures," according to Heidi Marston, interim executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, to NBC news.

"Homelessness has been here for decades," state Assemblyman Richard Bloom, a Democrat, told NBC News. "But for many of those decades, we really didn't see it as much as we do today."

In L.A. County, almost half of residents pay 50% of their income on rent, yet everyday those who find affordable housing (130) are surpassed by those becoming homeless (150) on average, according to the housing authority, NBC reported.

"This is truly poverty," Martson told NBC News.

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