The number of homeless people emerged this year at the highest level ever recorded, according to the federal government reported on Fridays.
An annual homeless count, conducted in January, found that the homeless population had increased by more than 70,000 people, or 12%. It’s the largest one-year jump since the Department of Housing and Urban Development began collecting data in 2007, and the increase has affected all segments of the homeless population.
Biden administration officials and academic experts said the increase reflected both a sharp increase in rents and the end of extraordinary measures the government had taken during the pandemic, including emergency rent relief and eviction bans.
“The most significant causes are the shortage of affordable housing and the high cost of housing,” said Jeff Olivet, head of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.
Since the start of the pandemic, the cost of basic housing has risen more than 20%, according to federal estimates called fair market rents.
But some researchers have said the increase in homelessness also comes from the growing number of migrants entering the homeless services system. That trend has only intensified since the count was taken, as Republican governors, particularly Greg Abbott in Texas, have sent more people arriving from across the border to Northern cities.
The sharpest growth in homelessness has occurred in the cities hardest hit by the influx of migrants, including New York, Denver and Chicago.
“Even without the immigration crisis we would have seen some increase, but certainly not to this extent,” said Dennis Culhane, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has long been an adviser on the federal government’s annual count.
“This is partly a manufactured problem,” he added, because migrants could have been treated more humanely outside the homeless services system in the areas where they arrived.
According to government calculations, 653,104 people in the United States were homeless in January.
Homelessness has grown among all groups tracked by the federal government. It has increased among individuals and families with children. He grew up among the young and the old. It has increased among the chronically homeless and among those entering the system for the first time.
It also increased among veterans, the group that had seen the steepest declines in recent years, after a significant expansion in federal aid.
The report coincides with increasingly bitter political clashes over homelessness and is likely to accelerate debate between progressives seeking more aid and conservatives seeking more stringent policing and programs.
Many communities have tried to clear out encampments or ban rough sleeping. Top Republicans rallied in support of a New York man arrested in May for killing a homeless passenger on a subway train. Former President Donald J. Trump, who is seeking to return to office, has said he will force the homeless into urban camps.
Other Republicans have criticized the federal policy of housing the homeless without requiring them to be treated for addiction or mental health problems, an approach called “Housing First.”
But supporters of the policy, which has long won bipartisan support, say rigorous evidence has shown it saves lives. They argue that the system needs more money, especially for housing.
“What I don’t want to see happen is for people to point to this count and say the homelessness system doesn’t work,” said Ann Oliva, who runs the National Alliance to End Homelessness, an advocacy group. “The primary driver of these numbers is the lack of affordable housing.”
A growing body of research has shown that rising rent burdens lead to increased homelessness. Federal housing aid reaches only about one in four eligible families, and the percentage of families paying more than half their income for housing is at a record high.
From 2007 to 2016, the number of homeless people decreased by 15% each year. It then increased by about 6% in the years before the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. The one-year increase of 70,000 people in 2023 is more than four times larger than any previous increase.
“Rents have risen in many places during the pandemic, but we have avoided a massive shift, largely due to the eviction moratorium,” said Gregg Colburn, a real estate law professor at the University of Washington. “Without a meaningful policy response, this problem will continue to get worse.”
President Biden has pledged to extend housing assistance to everyone who qualifies, but has gotten little new permanent aid from Congress.
In arguing that migration is driving the numbers – or, more precisely, the diversion of asylum seekers into the homeless services system – Culhane underlines their position.
Nearly three-quarters of the growth occurred in five states, of which four were heavily affected by the migration crisis. They are New York, Florida, Colorado and Massachusetts. New York alone accounts for more than 40% of the growth. (California is the fifth state.)
Additionally, Culhane notes, about 55% of the growth in homelessness has occurred among people who identify as Latino. The annual count does not ask people if they are migrants.
“This is not the natural flow of migration – this is the intentional transfer of migrants to communities unprepared to handle them,” he said.
At the same time, the sharp increase in the number of homeless veterans (+7%) and chronically homeless people (+12%) suggests that other forces must be at play, because a recent wave of immigration would not affect either group.
“There’s something else going on,” said Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, who said inflation could be a factor. “If your income was stable and all your expenses increased, that would equate to an increase in rent.”
Kevin Corinth, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he was particularly concerned about the 10% increase in unsheltered homelessness — those living on the streets — a condition that poses a high risk of injury or death. He noted that it has increased every year since 2015, with particularly high numbers in Western cities, which have fewer laws prohibiting people from living on the streets.
While high rents are part of the problem, he said, the continued increase in people living on the streets is “in part an indictment of the homeless services system,” which he called expensive and ineffective.
To the extent that the number also reflects the presence of migrants, he noted, it is likely to increase, as the population has grown since the count was taken nearly a year ago.
