Unprecedented Rise in Homelessness

The latest federal homelessness survey finds an 18 percent annual rise in the number of people living without permanent shelter.

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free.

This week's newsletter closes out the year by looking at the latest homelessness census released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which found a staggering increase in the number of people living on the streets or in shelters.

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Number of People Without a Roof Over Their Head Goes Through the Roof

This past Friday, HUD released the results of its Point-in-Time (PIT) count—an annual census of the homeless population conducted each January by local homeless service providers.

The 2024 numbers are not pretty. According to the HUD survey, 771,480 people were homeless in January 2024. Of those, 497,256 were "sheltered" homeless, meaning they were sleeping in an emergency shelter or transitional housing. Another 274,224 people were "unsheltered" homeless who slept outside, in vehicles, abandoned buildings, or other areas not fit for human habitation.

The top-line figure represents a remarkable 18 percent increase in the country's homeless population. That increase is even more shocking when one considers that the country's homeless population grew by 19 percent between 2007 and 2024. Near two decades' worth of growth in the homeless population occurred between 2023 and 2024.

A year-over-year comparison pic.twitter.com/eKA2YrkFlV

— Christian Britschgi (@christianbrits) December 30, 2024

That top-line figure obviously masks a lot of yearly ups and downs. Nevertheless, the numbers are moving decidedly in the wrong direction, and fast.

Breaking Down the Numbers

The huge rise in the homeless population is attributable to related increases in the sheltered homeless population and the number of homeless families.

Of the 118,376 additional homeless people counted in 2024, 100,762 (or 85 percent of the total) were sheltered. This represents a 25 percent annual increase.

The 2024 PIT found that the unsheltered population grew by 17,614, which represents a 7 percent increase. That significant, albeit less severe, increase is effectively a continuation of the steady pre-pandemic rise in the unsheltered homeless population.

Conversely, the sheltered homeless population boom is both a huge increase and a reversal of the trend line. The sheltered homeless population had been on a steady decline in the years before the pandemic. Shelter populations plummeted even more during COVID-19 as shelters slashed capacity as a social distancing measure. This fall was significant enough to push down the overall homeless population, even as the unsheltered homeless population was rising.

Similarly, the 2024 PIT count found a record 39 percent annual increase in homeless families with children. The population of homeless individuals grew by a more modest 9.6 percent. The veteran homeless population was the only group to see a decline, dropping by 7.6 percent.

Migrant Surge, Homeless Surge

The HUD report notes that 13 Continuum of Care (COC) organizations (the local federally funded groups that provide homeless services and perform the PIT) saw a large influx of migrants into their shelter system.

HUD attributes the massive increase in homelessness to a range of factors, including rising housing costs, the belated expiration of some pandemic aid programs and eviction moratoriums, the end of the child tax credit, and "systemic racism." One reason stands out above the rest: the recent influx of migrants to major northern U.S. cities.

"You combine the increase in family homelessness and the increase in sheltered homelessness, it looks like this is overwhelmingly driven by the migrant surge," says Judge Glock, director of research for the Manhattan Institute.

This is most obviously the case in New York City, which has a longstanding, robust "right-to-shelter" policy, and has seen its emergency shelter population grow from 55,677 in 2022 to 81,108 in 2023 to 132,892 in 2024—during which time the city received some 225,000 new migrants and asylum seekers.

New York City's COC attributes 88 percent of the increase in sheltered homelessness to asylum seekers. And the increase in New York City's homeless population accounts for roughly 40 percent of the national increase in the homeless population.

Cities like Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., which all have robust right-to-shelter policies and which have been primary destination cities for new migrants, also reported some of the largest jumps in their homeless populations, Glock notes.

Chicago's COC reported that most of the increase in its homeless population was a result of newly arriving migrants and asylum seekers.

Kevin Corinth of the American Enterprise Institute notes that 75 percent of the increase in sheltered homelessness over the past two years can be attributed to rising shelter populations in Massachusetts, metro Denver, New York City, and Chicago.

One-Off Increases, Chronic Problems

The number of migrants in big-city shelter systems is already falling, thanks partly to smaller influxes of new migrants and cities' own curtailment of shelter benefits.

There were 69,000 migrants in New York's shelter system in January 2024 when this year's PIT was performed, The New York Times reported. That's since fallen to 55,000.

A lingering question is whether this will merely shuffle currently sheltered homeless migrants into unsheltered street homelessness.

The Times reported earlier this summer on a rise in tent encampments in the city, populated by migrants who'd been evicted from the city's shelter system after staying the new maximum of 30 days.

Glock says right-to-shelter policies also pull people into the shelter system and into free temporary housing where they're counted as homeless. Places without right-to-shelter policies have lower overall rates of homelessness, suggesting migrants exiting shelters will find housing on their own.

HUD says that the January PIT likely captured sheltered homeless populations near their peak and that those numbers are declining. We'll have to wait until December 2025 to know for sure if that's true.

The huge, likely migrant-driven increase in the sheltered homeless population obscures the more depressing, humdrum reality from the 2024 HUD homeless report: the number of people sleeping on the streets is at record levels and continues to rise.

Homelessness continues to increase in almost every state in the country. That includes West Coast states that have not experienced a New York City–like migrant surge and already have among the country's worst rates of homelessness.

This steady rise in homelessness has occurred even as federal funding for homeless programs has steadily increased under the Biden administration.

It's no coincidence that homelessness continues to rise as housing continues to get more expensive in the country. Lower housing costs correlate with lower rates of homelessness.

In the places where homelessness is worst, housing costs continue to rise. We can expect homeless problems to continue to rise with them in the new year.

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Quick Links

• Earlier this month, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the city of North Las Vegas, Nevada, rejected the nonprofit Tunnels to Towers plan to build a privately funded 112-unit housing complex for low-income veterans on a vacant five-acre lot across the street from a Veterans Affairs hospital. The city argued that the location was a poor fit and thus declined to rezone the commercial property to allow the proposed housing.
• Housing inventory (the total number of homes available for sale) is at the highest it has been since November 2020, reports listing company RedFin.
• Last week, a judge ruled that the City of Los Angeles illegally tried to prevent a housing developer from using the city's streamlined development process known as ED1 to build a 220-unit project in a single-family neighborhood. LAist has the details.
• Mobile home prices are on the rise, reports Fortune. 
• California massively undershoots Gov. Gavin Newsom's campaign trail goal of building 3.5 million new homes by 2025.

Comments

[I, Woodchipper]

you spelled "drug addiction" wrong.

[n00bdragon]

This. Homelessness is not driven by the affordability of housing. The overwhelming majority of homeless people are homeless because they cannot, or will not, abide by the basic rules of places that would otherwise shelter them.

[Wizzle Bizzle]

Yup. You'd think a magazine called "Reason" would deal in facts now and again.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

We have an increese of homelessness, quick import more foreigners on h1b, increese welfare spending and give it to ngo's. And then say it's the uncaring Republicans fault

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Go one better and blame it on Trump; don't have to say how, just say it as publicly as possible and that will be enough.

[Vernon Depner]

Most H1b workers live crammed eight or ten into an apartment leased by their employers.

[Eeyore]

The total number seems low. I see homeless everywhere now. In every city. In multiple neighborhoods.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Maybe that's some of that "transient" homelessness.

[Longtobefree]

Federal statistics; not worth the read.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Hey, Reason! Just a reminder that "unprecedented" is not the same as "unpredicted".

[Vernon Depner]

Or even "unplanned".

[Dillinger]

freedom of choice is what they got. freedom from choice is what you want.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

What about freedom from want?

[Dillinger]

ask Siddhartha Gautama?

[Scooter]

Gee..... who's been (p)Resident the last 4 years?

[Don't look at me!]

Nobody really knows.

[Scooter]

True. I'm guessing "Dr. Jill."

[Wizzle Bizzle]

Yeah, I can only tell you specifically who HASN'T.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

Soros and gates

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Jill and the West Wing staff; any more questions?

[Scooter]

I read this just as I clicked 'submit'.

[Vernon Depner]

Obama

[Truthteller1]

Many of them would normally be in jail or prison because they are drug addicted thieves, but this isn't normal times. They are all mentally ill, and eventually this country is going to have to rebuild institutions to house the mentally ill.

[sarcasmic]

Institutions were cruel and inhumane, but in hindsight better than the alternative.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

"...it looks like this is overwhelmingly driven by the migrant surge,"

So can we just blame on a mismanaged/ aka unsecured Southern border? Over the past 4 years?

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Surprise! Many people do as little as possible so long as someone provides their needs!
SF's bum-budget continues to grow, and outgoing Mayor London Breed is surprised the number of bums is increasing!

[Quo Usque Tandem]

It's like baseball; if you pay [support, tolerate, accommodate...] them, they will come.

[Jerry B.]

“The latest federal homelessness survey finds an 18 percent annual rise in the number of people living without permanent shelter.”

Another resounding success for the Biden administration.

[JeremyR]

Signs that the new president is Republican: Homelessness starts getting reported on again. And they are how homeless, instead of being unhoused people.

Also does seem low. We have a number of homeless living in the Walmart parking lot where I work. Including a couple of of Walmart workers.

[See.More]

FFS

... Another 274,224 people were "unsheltered" homeless who slept outside, in vehicles, abandoned buildings, or other areas not fit for human habitation.

If people are living there, then those areas are, by definition, fit for human habitation. Just because some ivory-tower schmuck would not want to live in such an area does not mean it is "not fit."

[Quo Usque Tandem]

So sayeth our betters.

Speaking of betters, has anyone seen or heard from Rev. Arty since the election? I'm thinking he and others [like M4E, who suddenly and inexplicably eschewed politics] are still waiting on their talking points.

[mad.casual]

The buildings full of people are abandoned the way a factory full of robots or warehouses full of boxes are "inhabited" by those things.

If they aren't coming from or going to their pods, how can they be people?

[Super Scary]

"people living without permanent shelter."

No shelter is truly permanent. We're all homeless!

[AT]

Another 274,224 people were "unsheltered" homeless who slept outside, in vehicles, abandoned buildings, or other areas not fit for human habitation.

I'm going to challenge the phrasing of this. I mean, we lived in caves once. Teepees. Mudbrick. Adobe. Yurts. Rowhouses. So on and so forth. They were fit for human habitation.

Just not by decadent modern standards.

Heck, even BY modern standards, there's still plenty of less decadent living spaces around the world that are clearly fit for human habitation. Quonset huts, favelas, barrios, slums, shantytowns. Pretty awful by first world considerations - but that's the point I'm making.

The reason I challenge this is because your term "not fit for human habitation" necessarily assumes a socialist-based premise for precisely that reason. You're trying to imply a right to a certain modern standard of housing, one which humanity never enjoyed. It's the same reason to call BS on people who assert a "human right" to modern inventions. Everything from disposable diapers; to cellphones and internet service; to modern healthcare, dentistry, vaccines, and antibiotics.

I mean, how did those become humans rights? If they're human rights, does that mean that people who lacked them prior to their invention were somehow being wronged? Can one be "deprived" of something that hasn't been invented yet? And how does its mere invention suddenly (magically) establish a human right to it?

What you're doing with that term, Christian, is subtly implying that there is a "right" to housing. And not just a right, but a right to a very decadent standard of housing - which you call "fit for human habitation" according to a definition of your own choosing. What does "fit for human habitation" mean anyway? Indoor plumbing? Locking doors? Electrical lighting? HVAC? Refrigeration? A cozy little sun-lit nook where you can do yoga?

Like any good socialist, you leave that definition ambiguous - because you never know what you're going to need to fit under it. Because the socialist definition of "human right" is "whatever those in power say it is."

Which is, on its face, absurd. And why socialism always fails.

This goes back to a simple Law of Reality that leftists (not just socialists) in general fail to understand: if someone else has to provide it to you, by definition it cannot be a human right.

It's a tragedy the amount of homelessness and vagrancy that exists in a nation like the United States. But the way you talk about it reminds me of the snobbish, elitist, self-centered way decadent and overly-entitled people talk about food. "Nobody should eat anything not farm-raised organic and certified vegan, and certainly not factory farmed or GMO or with hormones." Meanwhile, people around the world scrabble for whatever tiny morsels of whatever they can get their hands on and consider themselves blessed for even finding it.

The homeless should be so lucky to have vehicles, tents, abandoned buildings. Because the REAL alternative for them, as opposed to the one you imply, is nothing.

If you want to address the problem of homelessness, you can't start from an elitist position of what standard of "habitation" is acceptable, and then blame the fact that the cost of that standard is too high (or, worse, that the State doesn't entitle people to enough handouts to afford that standard).

What you should be addressing is why America's homeless population can't meet even the barest standards of human habitation that even the most destitute in places like Rio de Janeiro's favelas or the Dharavi slums have figured out, if only to eek out their existence.

I'll give you a hint that's a large contributor to the problem: it's a subject Reason and most of its writers/readership do NOT want to admit is a serious - and socially/economically crippling - problem.

[Uncle Jay]

The mentally ill needs to be institutionalized despite a couple of SCOTUS's decisions.
The mentally ill are incapable of fending for themselves and often the victims of abuse and even murder.
Charitable organizations, especially the wealthy churches, (yes, I'm looking at you Roman Catholic Church and Mormon Church) to step and help these poor unfortunates, not any government bureaucracy.
Also, sometimes people slip through the cracks via unemployment and other problems, and these same churches need to step up and help those who want to help themselves.
What's the problem?

[RickAbrams]

Mayabe the federal government will adopt California's solution which was ato disbarred the attorney who proved that Los Angeles uses fatally flawed data to the extent that it subverted the law in its housing data. His data pointed out that more density would create higher prices and more homelessness. When the judge agreed with him and threw out the land use plan for Hollywood, the judge was off the bench and then the attorney was disbarred on the absurd grounds that he was not the attorney for the Plaintiffs. The state bar's case was simple --m they crossed out the attorney's name in the attorney client contract and wrote in a developer shill's name instead. Then the state bar refused to all a copy of the original contract into evidence. As the attorney predicted, within a couple years, Hollywood lost thousands more people, and then LA lost thousands of people, but the corruption continued. LA lost so many people that the state lost one representative in Congress and the homeless crisis got worse. The corruption continues, and homelessness now costs LA billions a dollars per years.

Litigation is silent since no attorney will file a lawsuit knowing that the results will be disbarrment. People are totally clueless how corruption and not bona fide demographics are behind the problem.

[Roberta]

I don't understand. How could greater density create higher prices and more homelessness? Wouldn't packing in more homes to the area in question mean an increase in quantity supplied?

Who is corrupting whom here? Who could possibly make money off the situation you describe? There's some crooked money to be made in not housing people? What's the racket? I need an explanation.

[Rick James]

This Libertopian low crime vibecession is looking worse and worse every day.

[mad.casual]

Well, since OD and murder numbers were down, Reason was confused as to where all those people missing from the workplace were going. Now they know.

On the plus side, they're having fewer children.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to sleep in a tent, unemployed, next to the natives we overtax and under employ."

[TJJ2000]

...because that's how Socialist Nations live!

We're just on the very beginning of what lies down the road unless people will stop believing Gov 'Guns' make sh*t.

[Tom]

HUD attributes some homelessness to "systemic racism." It is interesting to note that HUD, like other government agencies, uses systemic racism in its hiring and promotion policies.

Biden reaffirmrd the government's racist policies when he enterred office making DEI even more of a priority. White males need not apply.

One of HUD's reports stated: "In light of the lessons learned from the President’s Executive Order 13583 on “Establishing a
Coordinated Government-Wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce” whereby now a second phase of implementation of HUD’s “Inclusive Diversity
Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years (FY) 2017-2021” will soon be introduced ......

[Roberta]

How does this compare to the rest of the world? I'd like to know whether the trends we're seeing are global, national, or local.

[Wizzle Bizzle]

I have a 3-step plan to fix everything.

1) Turn the people experiencing homelessness into Soylent Verde, a carnitas-flavored offshoot of Soylent Green.

2) Sprinkle a trail of SV from every Hone Depot parking lot to the south side of the Mexican border.

3) After the people experiencing illegal immigration follow the trail across the border, shut that fucker down permanently.

[TJJ2000]

I have a 1-Step plan.

If you STEAL or Trespass UN-welcomed you can get arrested for it and get Housing, Food and Medical within the prison walls as well as a corrections team to advise you on how to support yourself legally.

Otherwise I really don't see a problem with camping being the #1 outdoor activity again.