The nation's 50 biggest cities are home to more than half the nation's homeless people, according to an annual federal report.
By Noah Manskar, Patch Staff | Dec 18, 2018 6:02 pm ET
NEW YORK — New York City was home to more than a tenth of the United States's homeless people this year as homelessness was mostly concentrated in the nation's large cities, an annual federal report shows.
A total of 552,830 people were homeless across the country on a single night in January 2018, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Annual Homeless Assessment Report released Monday. Some 78,676 of those, or about 14.2 percent, were in New York City, giving the five boroughs the largest homeless population for a major city, the report shows.
The nation's 50 largest cities accounted for more than half the nation's one-night homeless population, which grew by 0.3 percent this year, the report says. Nearly a quarter — or 24 percent — were in New York or Los Angeles alone.
The city accounted for more than 85 percent of the 91,897 homeless people recorded across New York State this year — a figure that has ballooned nearly 47 percent since 2007, according to the HUD report.
Only 5 percent of the city's homeless people are unsheltered, one of the lowest rates in the nation, the report says. Some 3,675 people in the city were sleeping in public places on one night this January, while about 61,000 were in shelters this past Sunday, according to city Department of Homeless Services figures.
The majority of the city's population comprised homeless people in families with children, the HUD figures show. Those 45,285 people accounted for about a quarter of the 180,413 people in that category nationwide, a number that reflects a 2 percent drop from 2017, the report says.
The nation's homeless population has decreased more than 13 percent since 2010, according to HUD. This year's slight uptick was because of nearly 4,000 people staying in emergency shelters in places affected by hurricanes and other events, as well as a 2.3 percent rise in unsheltered homelessness, the department says.
"Much progress is being made and much work remains to be done but I have great hope that communities all across our nation are intent on preventing and ending homelessnes," HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a news release.