There Were More Homeless People in America This Year Than There Are People in Three States

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released a new report on homelessness on Friday, painting a dire, bordering-on-failed-state picture of the crisis. HUD found that more than 770,000 people experienced homelessness on a January night in 2024, an 18 percent jump from the previous year and easily the highest number on record. That means that at least for one night, “homeless people in America” was the 47th biggest state in the country, larger than the populations of Alaska, Vermont, or Wyoming.

The data was from what is known as a “point-in-time” count on a single night, and the head of HUD Adrianne Todman stressed that the data “no longer reflects the situation we are seeing.” Still, it reflects a gross failure of policy, even if some funding and maneuvers may have dropped the numbers in the months since. “No American should face homelessness,” Todman said.

Though the report blamed factors including inflation, the high cost of housing, and the end of pandemic-era programs, the New York Times eagerly granted federal officials the benefit of the doubt in blaming “migrants” right up in their headline about the report. Those officials “placed special emphasis on the rise in asylum-seeking migrants who overwhelmed the shelter systems,” the Times noted, though they followed this immediately with a pretty significant caveat: “The government does not track the migration status of the homeless.” In HUD’s release it did note that some communities reported increased homelessness was “a result of their work to shelter a rising number of asylum seekers.” But only 13 such communities were included, out of a total 386.

The HUD report found that basically all categories of unhoused people grew, though some cities including Los Angeles and Dallas saw significant decreases. The agency also noted that rents have stabilized over the past year, and new housing units have been added that could hopefully see the count drop at its next iteration.