PORTLAND – Portland’s homeless shelter for men is more than full. Our makeshift shelter arrangements for homeless women are over capacity. The family shelter also has been more than full.

Though Portland is sheltering a record number of people, there are probably hundreds, if not more than a thousand people, sleeping in parks, vehicles, alleys and on their friends or families’ floors, who never are counted.

But this is not just a local problem. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently declared that his city had the highest number of homeless people ever recorded. When I was in Southern California last summer, the same testimony came from the other “capital of homelessness,” Los Angeles, where both advocates and officials said there is “no room at the inn.”

There is actually not much mystery why homelessness is at record numbers. The poverty rate unveiled recently by the federal government shows a record number of poor people. Not since before the “war on poverty” in 1964 have we had such a high percentage of our population statistically poor.

When poverty is high, homelessness, which is the worst form of poverty, goes up as well. The housing crisis in cities from Portland to New York to Los Angeles, from Boston to Seattle, goes on. Low vacancy rates make apartments scarce for even middle-class people. But for the poor, with cuts in federal housing aid (particularly the lack of Section 8 vouchers) and rising rents, there is even less space.

And if you have a felony record or have no job or a low-paying job, forget it. Sometimes even having a dog or children rules you out as a tenant.

Other issues exacerbate homelessness: For example, our continuing “war on drugs” sends people to prison, but when their terms end, they often end up on the streets, and a record number of our inmates in jails and prisons are mentally ill and receive little treatment.

Meanwhile, wages are continuing in free fall when adjusted for inflation. Unless the whole nation begins to get some big raises, millions of Americans are in danger of not making it.

The sad part of the whole sorry situation is that it is not a crisis. Kim Hopper, an expert on homelessness, notes:

“Homelessness became domesticated, routine, an all-but-expected feature of the urban landscape. No longer cause for vocal concern, let alone outrage, it has been integrated into that cheerless diorama of unabashed wealth and relentless poverty that now passes for ‘normalcy’ in American cities.”

Indeed, neither the print media nor Internet news covers homelessness much. The politicians of both parties never mention homelessness, or, for that matter, poverty. President Obama and Mitt Romney seek middle-class votes.

Sadly, as friends of mine in the Los Angeles Community Action Network, a majority African-American group in Los Angeles, bemoan, there has been less talk about issues that concern poor black people under our first black president than before (poverty, homelessness, welfare, the drug war, the minimum wage, etc.). But nor do the political leaders wish to talk about low wages. Neither party can even seem to think of a way to get people more money, which is what Americans of low and middle income need.

A cause that in the 1980s was a cause celebre (remember Hands Across America or Comic Relief, middle-aged people?) has turned into non-news.

In a recent book with my former student Jennifer Gilman, we examined why people no longer perceive homelessness as a big issue. There are many reasons, but perhaps paradoxically, among them is that we were sold a bill of goods in the 1980s: that shelters, soup kitchens, clothes closets and case management would somehow end homelessness.

Experts mostly did not believe that these Band-Aids would help much, but mostly went along. Homelessness and poverty are economic and social problems. It will take major societal efforts to build houses, provide jobs and raise social welfare benefits to standards that exist in most of the civilized world, but not in America.

Since people do not seem to want to talk about this, we avoid discussions of inequality and keep building prisons, America’s major “social welfare” program for the poor. These have become the major “shelters” for our poor, particularly people of color. 

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