US homelessness jumps 12% in 2023 to record high of 653,000 individuals

The number of homeless people in the US soared to 653,000 people early this year, the highest amount on record, with experts estimating that is likely an undercount.

According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, contributing factors were the drug crisis, the surge in illegal immigrants, rising housing costs, and expiring COVID aid.

The data showed a 12 percent spike since 2022, the largest increase since the US began publishing comparable data in 2007. 

The Wall Street Journal reported that before 2023, excluding counts during the pandemic, the largest increase was 2.7 percent in 2019. 

HUD collects data from one-day/night counts, usually taken by homeless aid or municipal agencies around the US each year, to estimate how many people are in shelters and on the street. However, the totals are typically undercounts, as HUD only requires an official count every two years, so in places like Seattle and San Francisco, which have two of the country’s largest homeless crises, there was not a count in 2023.

HUD data also showed a 12 percent increase in chronically homeless individuals as well as a 15 percent increase in unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness since last year. There was a similar increase in the number of homeless people in families with children.

Meantime, people who identified as Hispanic or Latino made up 55% of the increase in homelessness between 2022 and 2023. Those trends largely reflect an influx of illegal immigrants in cities such as New York City and Chicago, said Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor who helped compile HUD’s homelessness reports in past years.

New York City and Los Angeles County accounted for nearly one in every four homeless people in the US in 2023. Homelessness in the Big Apple jumped 42 percent, the highest number in the US, mostly due to the surge in illegal immigrants being shipped there from the border.