Homelessness in New York State has grown sharply, more than doubling between January 2022 and January 2024, according to a report released Wednesday by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. Homelessness grew by 53.1% from January 2023 to January 2024, more than four times the rest of the nation. The large spike was driven by New York City and the influx of asylum seekers, but the rest of the state also had double- and triple-digit rate increases, led by Glens Falls, Saratoga, and the surrounding counties.
The number of homeless children increased from 20,299 in 2022 to 50,773 in 2024. Almost one in three of New York’s homeless are children, one of the highest shares in the nation.
“New York has long had a housing affordability crisis, and more families are running out of options and ending up on the street or in shelters,” DiNapoli said. “Many of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers that came to New York had no place to stay and drove up spending and a large portion of the growth of the homeless population. But let’s be clear, this isn’t just a New York City problem, it is impacting communities all over the state. New York needs to examine how it’s using current housing resources while taking more action to address this urgent situation.”
Measuring homelessness is difficult as individuals are mobile and their situations can be temporary or hidden. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) uses a single day, point in time count of the homeless population. The most recent count was done in January 2024, the same month the number of asylum seekers in city shelters peaked.
HUD found homelessness reached a new peak with 771,480 people nationwide experiencing homelessness in 2024. There were more than 158,000 homeless New Yorkers in 2024 – about one in five of the nation’s homeless. New York’s rate of homelessness, at about 8 per 1,000 people, was higher than all states except Hawaii and the District of Columbia. According to HUD, homelessness in New York increased because of eviction proceedings, lack of affordable housing, increased rents, and the influx of asylum seekers, among other factors.
New York City accounted for 93% of the increase in the state’s total homeless population. In January 2022, there were 45,343 people in New York City shelters run by the city Department of Homeless Services (DHS). By January 2024, there were 89,119 people in DHS shelters, 34,057 of whom were asylum seekers. New York City housed approximately 68,000 asylum seekers in total at that time.
Other findings in the report:
- Homelessness decreased in New York between 2020 and 2022, but since 2022 and the end of pandemic eviction moratoriums, it has increased faster than the rest of the nation, more than doubling between 2022 and 2024 compared to only 20.7% growth in the rest of the nation. Only Illinois had a higher increase at 180%.
- People who were homeless were disproportionately Hispanic or Black, and 10% suffered from severe mental illness or chronic substance abuse.
- Homelessness among veterans remains low, at less than 1%. New York also had among the lowest shares of senior homelessness (2.5%) and chronically homeless (3.6%) among other states.
- The rest of the state’s regions had increases ranging from 11% in Poughkeepsie/Dutchess County to 138% in Glens Falls, Saratoga Springs and surrounding counties. Outside of New York City, Long Island had the largest number of homeless in 2024 followed by Westchester County and counties around Buffalo and Niagara Falls.
New York has the lowest share of unsheltered people at 3.6% in stark contrast to 43.8% in the rest of the nation. New York has the largest number of year-round emergency housing beds at 127,759, far surpassing second place California (76,000 beds), according to HUD. This number is mostly beds in emergency shelters (122,091), which is largely a result of shelter mandates in New York City.
New York is second to California in the number of permanent supportive housing units (52,462 vs. 78,758) and permanent housing beds (21,672 vs. 26,059), but lags other large states in the number of year-round beds for rapid rehousing – 4,887. California has more than 28,000, Texas almost 11,000 and Florida 7,500.
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