NEW YORKERS IN NEED
Having safe and adequate housing is essential. However, an increasing number of New Yorkers are facing housing insecurity, with a concerning rise in homelessness in recent years. Between January 2022 and January 2024, homelessness in New York more than doubled, while it grew by over 20 percent across the rest of the country.
Homelessness is a severe form of housing insecurity. Measuring homelessness is difficult because homelessness can be temporary, episodic, or even hidden; individuals are mobile, and definitions of homelessness can vary. The most commonly used data are the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) Point-in-Time count of the homeless population, ordinarily conducted on a single day in January of each year. The most recent count was conducted in January 2024, with the data being released at the end of December 2024.
Nationally, homelessness reached a new peak with a total of 771,480 people experiencing homelessness in 2024. There were 158,019 homeless New Yorkers– about 1 in 5 of the nation’s homeless (up from about 1 in 7 last year). New York’s rate of homelessness, at about 8 per 1,000 people, was higher than all states except Hawaii and the District of Columbia, and about four times greater than the rest of the nation.
The Demographics of Homelessness
A driver of the increases in New York between 2022 and 2024 has been a near tripling of the number of homeless people in families, which grew from 34,805 in 2022 to 95,457 in 2024. Homeless people in families now constitute 60.4 percent of the overall homeless. Concerningly, 32.1 percent of New York’s homeless are under the age of 18, one of the highest shares in the nation. The number of homeless children has more than doubled between 2022 (20,299) and 2024 (50,773).
People experiencing homelessness in New York in 2024 were disproportionately Hispanic or Black. The share of Hispanic or Latino homeless grew from 33.7 percent in 2021 to 55.5 percent in 2024. Ten percent suffered from severe mental illness or chronic substance abuse.
Reasons for the recent growth in homelessness are numerous. According to HUD, New York’s increase in homelessness between 2023 and 2024 was attributable to increases in eviction proceedings, lack of affordable housing, increased rents, and the influx of asylum seekers, among other factors.
Resources
- National Institutes of Health, “The Methodology of Counting the Homeless,” Homelessness, Health and Human Needs, 1988, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218229.
- The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Community Planning and Development, Point in-Time Count and Housing Inventory Count - HUD Exchange, https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/hdx/pit hic/#2024-pit-count-and-hic-guidance.
- Since the PIT estimates have been conducted. This figure includes the 50 states and U.S. territories (Guam, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa). Homelessness in the territories totaled 3,624 in 2024, representing less than 0.5 percent of the U.S. total. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Community Planning and Development, The 2024 Annual Homelessness Report to Congress, December 2024, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-AHAR-Part-1.pdf.
- Using PIT estimates and vintage population estimates published by the U.S. Census Bureau for July 2024. Analysis does not include the U.S. territories.
