The Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay (NABB) held its fifth forum on homelessness on October 9 to share information on the root causes of homelessness and its increase in Boston in recent years.

The meeting featured speakers from Harvard University’s School of Public Health, the Boston Housing Authority, and the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

“We were trying to look at it from academic, city, and state perspectives,” said Elisabeth Morris, a co-chair of the NABB’s Homelessness Task Force, which hosted the meeting. “What does each one of these see as a major problem, and how are they attacking this problem?”

Dr. Howard Koh, a professor at Harvard, said that homelessness was the major health inequity of current times. He listed risk factors for homelessness, including the lack of affordable housing, chronic health conditions or mental health disorders, failure in the justice or foster care systems and social discrimination.

For Josh Cuddy, the director of interagency coordination for the state housing office, however, the biggest factor driving homelessness was the lack of available homes.

“Between 1960 and 1990, Massachusetts communities permitted almost 900,000 housing units,” Cuddy wrote in his presentation. “Since 1990, communities have permitted fewer than 490,000 new units.” At the same time, Massachusetts housing prices have increased more than in any other state. Cuddy said that there had been record increases in homelessness in Massachusetts. According to him, homelessness in Boston has increased by nearly 20 percent when compared to 2023.

In the Back Bay, homeless people congregate in the subway system or near the Boston Public Library. “I get my coffee at the Dunkin Donuts on Boylston Street and Exeter, and there were four people sleeping there when I went this morning,” Morris said. “A lot of homeless people go to the library to get warm, so the library now has a big social services department.”

Morris said the library was working closely with providers like the Pine Street Inn, a permanent supportive housing program, to help build trust with the homeless population and bring individuals to shelters. One such shelter is 140 Clarendon Street, a recent redevelopment of the YWCA building that provides over 300 housing units and affordable apartments. “It’s in our neighborhood in the Back Bay, and we’re in the second highest cost neighborhood,” said Kathy Young, another co-chair of the task force. “We’re extremely proud to be contributing to the solution.”

140 Clarendon Street is funded in part by the Boston Housing Authority’s rental voucher program, which helps minimize housing costs for the 60,000 people living in public or affordable housing throughout the city. Kenzie Bok, the BHA’s lead administrator, said at the meeting that she was proud to provide housing to a diverse resident population, including youth, families, elders and veterans.