When analyzing the ratio of homelessness to state population, New York, Vermont, and Oregon had the highest rates in 2023. However, Washington, D.C. had an estimated 73 homeless individuals per 10,000 people, which was significantly higher than any of the 50 states. Homeless people by race The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development performs homeless counts at the end of January each year, which includes people in both sheltered and unsheltered locations. The estimated number of homeless people increased to 653,104 in 2023 – the highest level since 2007. However, the true figure is likely to be much higher, as some individuals prefer to stay with family or friends - making it challenging to count the actual number of homeless people living in the country. In 2023, nearly half of the people experiencing homelessness were white, while the number of Black homeless people exceeded 243,000. How many veterans are homeless in America? The  number of homeless veterans in the United States has halved since 2010. The state of California, which is currently suffering a homeless crisis, accounted for the highest number of homeless veterans in 2022. There are many causes of homelessness among veterans of the U.S. military, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse problems, and a lack of affordable housing.

In 2023, there were about 653,104 homeless people estimated to be living in the United States, the highest number of homeless people recorded within the provided time period. In comparison, the second-highest number of homeless people living in the U.S. within this time period was in 2007, at 647,258. How is homelessness calculated? Calculating homelessness is complicated for several different reasons. For one, it is challenging to determine how many people are homeless as there is no direct definition for homelessness. Additionally, it is difficult to try and find every single homeless person that exists. Sometimes they cannot be reached, leaving people unaccounted for. In the United States, the Department of Housing and Urban Development calculates the homeless population by counting the number of people on the streets and the number of people in homeless shelters on one night each year. According to this count, Los Angeles City and New York City are the cities with the most homeless people in the United States. Homelessness in the United States Between 2022 and 2023, New Hampshire saw the highest increase in the number of homeless people. However, California was the state with the highest number of homeless people, followed by New York and Florida. The vast amount of homelessness in California is a result of multiple factors, one of them being the extreme high cost of living, as well as opposition to mandatory mental health counseling and drug addiction. However, the District of Columbia had the highest estimated rate of homelessness per 10,000 people in 2023. This was followed by New York, Vermont, and Oregon.

"Ratio of Homeless Population to General Population in major US Cities in 2012. *This represents a list of large U.S. cities for which DHS was able to confirm a recent estimate of the unsheltered population. Unsheltered estimates are from 2011 except for Seattle and New York City (2012) and Chicago (2009). All General Population figures are from the 2010 U.S. Census enumeration."

Novel and comprehensive cross-sectional datasets were developed to document and measure city level homeless policies across issue area. The dataset is comprised of the 100 largest cities in the United States, including FIPS identifiers and matched Continuum of Care (CoC) level identifiers by CoC number associated with the city. The datasets include city-level homeless policies in the 100 largest cities across the issues of homeless plans; housing plans with mentions of homelessness; homeless outreach teams; and the role of sanitation in homeless policy. Each dataset includes sub-codes to evaluate the governance structure and policy goals of each type of city-level homeless policy. Primary data were collected in 2021 and 2022. Please see the attached publications for complete methodology and data collection procedures for each policy type.

Presents the number of individuals for each shelter facility type by borough and community district

This data tracks the number of beds available for runaway and homeless youth and young adults as well as the number and percent vacant. Data include Crisis Shelters, Crisis Shelters HYA (Homeless Young Adults), Transitional Independent Living, and Transitional Independent Living HYA. For more information about programs, visit https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dycd/services/services.page and https://discoverdycd.dycdconnect.nyc/home.

For the RHY Data Collection, please follow this link.

The Local Employment Dynamics (LED) Partnership is a voluntary federal-state enterprise created for the purpose of merging employee, and employer data to provide a set of enhanced labor market statistics known collectively as Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI). The QWI are a set of economic indicators including employment, job creation, earnings, and other measures of employment flows. For the purposes of this dataset, LED data for 2018 is aggregated to Census Summary Level 070 (State + County + County Subdivision + Place/Remainder), and joined with the Continuum of Care Program grantee areas spatial dataset for FY2017. The Continuum of Care (CoC) Homeless Assistance Programs administered by HUD award funds competitively and require the development of a Continuum of Care system in the community where assistance is being sought. A continuum of care system is designed to address the critical problem of homelessness through a coordinated community-based process of identifying needs and building a system to address those needs. The approach is predicated on the understanding that homelessness is not caused merely by a lack of shelter, but involves a variety of underlying, unmet needs - physical, economic, and social. Funds are granted based on the competition following the Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA). Please note that this version of the data does not include Community Planning and Development (CPD) entitlement grantees. LED data for CPD entitlement areas can be obtained from the LED for CDBG Grantee Areas feature service. To learn more about the Local Employment Dynamics (LED) Partnership visit: https://lehd.ces.census.gov/, for questions about the spatial attribution of this dataset, please reach out to us at GISHelpdesk@hud.gov. Data Dictionary: DD_LED for CoC Grantee Areas

Date of Coverage: CoC-2021/LED-2018

According to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's definition, homelessness includes individuals and families who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. A homeless count provides a "snapshot in time" to quantify the size of the homeless population at a specific point during the year. Regardless of how successful outreach efforts are, an undercount of people experiencing homelessness is possible. Counts includes persons experiencing unsheltered and sheltered homelessness. Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count occurred in the nights of February 22, 23 and 24, 2022. Glendale's count occurred in the morning and evening of February 25, 2022. Long Beach's count occurred in the early morning of February 24, 2022. Pasadena's count occurred in the evening of February 22, 2022 and morning of February 23, 2022. Data not available for Los Angeles City neighborhoods and unincorporated Los Angeles County; LAHSA does not recommend aggregating census tract-level data to calculate numbers for other geographic levels.Housing affordability is a major concern for many Los Angeles County residents. Housing burden can increase the risk for homelessness. Individuals experiencing homelessness experience disproportionately higher rates of certain health conditions, such as tuberculosis, HIV infection, alcohol and drug abuse, and mental illness. Barriers to accessing care and limited access to resources contribute greatly to these observed disparities.For more information about the Community Health Profiles Data Initiative, please see the initiative homepage.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Homelessness Case Level Information Collection (H-CLIC) project aims to create a linked dataset of information about homelessness in England, to improve understanding of its causes and impacts. It is the result of a collaboration between the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). The project will allow decision-makers to develop more effective policies to reduce homelessness and improve the lives of people across the country. Specifically, the H-CLIC project will involve linking data from across local authorities in England, and to other administrative datasets. The H-CLIC data records local authorities' actions under the 2017 Homelessness Reduction Act, which significantly reformed England's homelessness legislation by placing duties on local authorities to intervene at earlier stages to prevent and reduce homelessness. The H-CLIC project has three elements, some of which will be phased:

• The first aims to use the linked H-CLIC data from across local authorities to develop a better understanding of whether homelessness is resolved in the long term, particularly across local authority boundaries. This will help to establish what works to prevent homelessness, and which elements of the Homelessness Reduction Act are most effective.
• The second aims to match together H-CLIC data and the Rough Sleeping Evaluation Questionnaire to identify how effectively interventions have prevented homelessness and improved other outcomes in the longer term. DLUHC already have rough sleeping evaluations in progress that would benefit from this work.
• Finally, the third element aims to match the H-CLIC data to data gathered from other government departments/health agencies to determine the wider circumstances and outcomes of people who have experienced homelessness, such as educational outcomes, employment, benefits and health. This will enable us to identify the wider impacts and longer-term outcomes, and estimate the costs of homelessness.

The DLUHC intends to use the data to assess the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act, for example by identifying the factors associated with better or worse outcomes for households at risk of homelessness and to understand more about the factors that drive homelessness and how best to address them.

Ultimately, the project will provide central government departments, local public services and delivery partners with valuable information about the cycle of homelessness and its impact on the lives of those it affects, as well as the impact and cost-benefit of interventions and services targeted at reducing homelessness. The information should be useful to inform future service design and reform and investment decisions.

Further information, including reports and tables, may be found on the Gov.uk Homelessness Statistics Collection webpage.

For the second edition (August 2024), data files for 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 have been added, and the data file for 2019-2020 has been updated to include additional cases. The documentation has also been expanded and updated.

Main Topics:

The variables include:

• Local authority code, name and region;
• Assessment of the household’s homelessness circumstances; year and the quarter of the original assessment of circumstances and needs;
• Household's accommodation arrangements at the time of their homeless application; household's last settled accommodation; main reason for loss of last settled home;
• Household type; ethnic group, age, gender, nationality and employment status of the main applicant; employment status of the main applicant's partner if in same household;
• Main prevention activity undertaken by the local authority as part of the Prevention Duty and reason for that; household’s accommodation when the Prevention Duty ended;
• Main relief activity that was undertaken by the local authority as part of the Relief Duty; reason the Relief Duty was ended; whether household was homeless at the end of Relief;
• Coded outcome of the decision on what duty (if any) is owed; household’s accommodation following that decision;
• Year and quarter that the household entered and left local authority temporary accommodation;
• Whether the household is in receipt of housing benefits or means-tested benefits;
• Whether under support needs the household includes:
  • Anyone in specific categories covering young persons, young parents, care leavers, older people, anyone with physical/mental ill health and/or a physical or learning disability;
  • anyone who has experience of, or is at risk of, specific types of exploitation or abuse;
  • anyone with drug or alcohol dependency needs, or with an...

The Continuum of Care (CoC) Homeless Assistance Programs administered by HUD award funds competitively and require the development of a Continuum of Care system in the community where assistance is being sought. A continuum of care system is designed to address the critical problem of homelessness through a coordinated community-based process of identifying needs and building a system to address those needs. The approach is predicated on the understanding that homelessness is not caused merely by a lack of shelter, but involves a variety of underlying, unmet needs - physical, economic, and social. Funds are granted based on the competition following the Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA).To learn more about the CoC Program visit: https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/coc/, for questions about the spatial attribution of this dataset, please reach out to us at GISHelpdesk@hud.gov. Data Dictionary: DD_Continuum of CareDate of Coverage: FY 2024

This dataset provides data on youth who sought DYCD Runaway & Homeless Youth services and then were unable to access an RHY bed or subsequently refused services. For more information about programs, visit https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dycd/services/services.page and https://discoverdycd.dycdconnect.nyc/home.

For the RHY Data Collection, please follow this link.

The Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG), formally the Emergency Shelter Grants, program is designed to identify sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons, as well as those at risk of homelessness, and provide the services necessary to help those persons quickly regain stability in permanent housing after experiencing a housing crisis and/or homelessness. The ESG is a non-competitive formula grant awarded to recipients which are state governments, large cities, urban counties, and U.S. territories. Recipients make these funds available to eligible sub-recipients, which can be either local government agencies or private nonprofit organizations. The recipient agencies and organizations, which actually run the homeless assistance projects, apply for ESG funds to the governmental grantee, and not directly to HUD. To learn more about the Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG) Program visit: https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/esg/, for questions about the spatial attribution of this dataset, please reach out to us at GISHelpdesk@hud.gov. Data Dictionary: DD_ESG Grantee Areas

Date of Coverage: 2018

In 2023, the around 11.1 percent of the population was living below the national poverty line in the United States. Poverty in the United StatesAs shown in the statistic above, the poverty rate among all people living in the United States has shifted within the last 15 years. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines poverty as follows: “Absolute poverty measures poverty in relation to the amount of money necessary to meet basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. The concept of absolute poverty is not concerned with broader quality of life issues or with the overall level of inequality in society.” The poverty rate in the United States varies widely across different ethnic groups. American Indians and Alaska Natives are the ethnic group with the most people living in poverty in 2022, with about 25 percent of the population earning an income below the poverty line. In comparison to that, only 8.6 percent of the White (non-Hispanic) population and the Asian population were living below the poverty line in 2022. Children are one of the most poverty endangered population groups in the U.S. between 1990 and 2022. Child poverty peaked in 1993 with 22.7 percent of children living in poverty in that year in the United States. Between 2000 and 2010, the child poverty rate in the United States was increasing every year; however,this rate was down to 15 percent in 2022. The number of people living in poverty in the U.S. varies from state to state. Compared to California, where about 4.44 million people were living in poverty in 2022, the state of Minnesota had about 429,000 people living in poverty.

The Local Employment Dynamics (LED) Partnership is a voluntary federal-state enterprise created for the purpose of merging employee, and employer data to provide a set of enhanced labor market statistics known collectively as Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI). The QWI are a set of economic indicators including employment, job creation, earnings, and other measures of employment flows. For the purposes of this dataset, LED data for 2018 is aggregated to Census Summary Level 070 (State + County + County Subdivision + Place/Remainder), and joined with the Emergency Solutions Grantee (ESG) areas spatial dataset for FY2018. The Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG), formally the Emergency Shelter Grants, program is designed to identify sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons, as well as those at risk of homelessness, and provide the services necessary to help those persons quickly regain stability in permanent housing after experiencing a housing crisis and/or homelessness. The ESG is a non-competitive formula grant awarded to recipients which are state governments, large cities, urban counties, and U.S. territories. Recipients make these funds available to eligible sub-recipients, which can be either local government agencies or private nonprofit organizations. The recipient agencies and organizations, which actually run the homeless assistance projects, apply for ESG funds to the governmental grantee, and not directly to HUD. Please note that this version of the data does not include Community Planning and Development (CPD) entitlement grantees. LED data for CPD entitlement areas can be obtained from the LED for CDBG Grantee Areas feature service. To learn more about the Local Employment Dynamics (LED) Partnership visit: https://lehd.ces.census.gov/, for questions about the spatial attribution of this dataset, please reach out to us at GISHelpdesk@hud.gov. Data Dictionary: DD_LED for ESG Grantee Areas

Date of Coverage: ESG-2021/LED-2018