Homelessness in the US rises to a record high in 2023
HOMELESSNESS surged this year, to the highest level on record, the US government reported on Friday (Dec 15).
An annual headcount, conducted in January, found the homeless population had increased by more than 70,000 people, or 12 per cent. That is the single largest one-year jump since the Department of Housing and Urban Development began collecting data in 2007; the increase affected all parts of the homeless population.
By the government’s count, 653,104 people in the US were homeless in January.
Biden administration officials and academic experts said the increase reflected both a sharp rise in rents and the end of the extraordinary measures the government had enacted during the pandemic, including financial aid and bans on eviction.
“The most significant causes are the shortage of affordable homes and the high cost of housing,” said Jeff Olivet, head of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness.
But some researchers said the rise in homelessness also stemmed from the growing number of migrants entering the homeless services system. That trend has only intensified since the count was taken, as Republican governors, especially Greg Abbott in Texas, have sent more people who have arrived from across the border to northern cities.
Some of the sharpest growth in homelessness has occurred in the cities most affected by the influx of migrants, including New York, Denver and Chicago.
“Even without the migrant 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 served as an adviser to the federal government’s annual count.
Homelessness grew among every group the federal government tracks. It rose among individuals and families with children; it rose among the young and the old, and it rose among the chronically homeless and those entering the system for the first time.
It also rose among veterans, the group that in recent years had experienced the sharpest declines, after a significant expansion of federal aid.
From 2007 to 2016, homelessness fell every year, by a total of 15 per cent. It then rose by about 6 per cent in the years before the pandemic.
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