Homelessness rates jumped by double digits in 2024 as Americans battled to afford housing

More Americans were homeless this year compared with 2023 as families continued struggling to afford rent and other basic necessities, federal officials announced Friday.

Across the U.S., more than 771,800 people lived without housing in 2024, according to a count taken annually on a single night in January. The number for January 2024 is 18.1% higher than in 2023, when officials counted about 650,000 people living in homeless shelters or in parks and on streets. In 2022, the population of people experiencing homelessness was about 580,000.

"The numbers are just mind-boggling to me," Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, told USA TODAY.

Many cities have struggled to build more affordable housing in recent years, while some communities have pushed for harsher laws banning tents and sleeping in public spaces. More local leaders across the U.S. need to invest in strategies to keep people in their homes when money is tight, experts told USA TODAY, otherwise the unhoused population will continue to grow.

"The underlying conditions driving homelessness are not going the right direction," National Housing Law Project Executive Director Shamus Roller told USA TODAY. "Housing affordability is worse; it's affecting more people across the country, and so you can't be surprised that people are essentially falling off the back of the wagon."

Senior administration officials told reporters Friday that the increase can be blamed on a combination of housing costs, an influx of migrants in shelters, and natural disasters such as the Maui wildfires that left people in emergency shelters.

Some of that has changed since January when the count was taken, officials said. In June, President Joe Biden took executive action to limit the number of illegal border crossings, which officials said has reduced the strain on shelters. Denver and Chicago recently announced an end to their migrant shelters.

Communities in Dallas, Los Angeles and Chester County, Pennsylvania, notably saw a drop in their homelessness counts in 2024, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

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Homeless population likely larger than counted

Every community across the U.S. receiving HUD funding is required to tally its homeless population, said Adam Ruege, a data analyst who worked with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and now tracks homeless populations in more than 100 communities across the country with the national nonprofit Community Solutions.

But because the count is done each January, the number calculated for unsheltered homeless populations is "fundamentally an undercount," Ruege said, because people try to seek any form of shelter they can during winter, including cars and other structures not meant for human habitation.

The annual nationwide count is also inherently flawed because it captures data from just a single moment out of the year, he said.

"It's just one point in time. It's a picture, a photograph, as opposed to a video" Ruege said.

Veteran homelessness drops as crisis grows overall

The Biden administration made progress reducing homelessness among veterans: That population decreased nearly 12% during the president's term. From 2023 to 2024, the number of homeless veterans decreased from 35,000 to 32,800, a drop of about 7.5%, according to data released by HUD. This fall, the department announced veteran homelessness was at its lowest level ever since tracking began in 2009.

But this year's increase in the overall homeless population is a repeat of the increase from 2022 to 2023 and marks the end of a two-year timeline set by Biden, when in 2022 he declared a goal of decreasing the nation's homeless population by the end of his first term.

The federal government was more successful reducing homelessness among veterans in part because housing and mental health services from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs were strategically paired with resources from HUD, experts told USA TODAY.

"When we have bipartisan leadership, when we have resources at the scale of need and we have smart program design and policy, we can actually drive down the numbers," Oliva said.

Ruege also said government's veteran-specific resources mean they have solutions on hand when someone becomes at risk for homelessness.

"The reality is when the federal government, Congress and the White House dedicate resources in a bipartisan way, you're going to see results, and we see that with veterans because of the strong safety net veterans have," Ruege said.

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Veteran homelessness has declined by more than 55% since 2009, according to HUD, and similar progress can be made with the entire U.S. homeless population if resources are deployed similarly to tackle all homelessness, said Marion McFadden, HUD’s principal deputy assistant secretary for community planning and development.

"We need to assume that every single person is housing-ready," McFadden told USA TODAY. "You don't have to prequalify by going through some kind of treatment or getting ready to be in a house."

The drop in veteran homelessness came after housing officials waived up-front requirements and expanded income eligibility cut-offs for homeless veterans in Los Angeles, said Richard Monocchio, HUD's principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Public and Indian Housing.

"Income verification takes time, and if you've been living on the street or in a van or in a shelter, you might not have immediate access to these documents," Monocchio told USA TODAY. "We said, 'We are going to presume that these homeless people that don't have housing are eligible.'"

In Los Angeles, which along with New York City has the nation's largest homeless population, veteran homelessness declined by nearly a quarter from 2023 to 2024, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

It's about giving people "breathing room," McFadden said, and making it easier for them to access resources they're entitled to.

"When someone's life is consumed by their need for housing, they shouldn't have to be experts in federal statutes and regulations," she said.

Contributing: Jeanine Santucci

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How many people were homeless in the US in 2024?