Migrants and end of COVID restrictions fuel jump in homelessness

WASHINGTON — Homelessness soared to the highest level on record this year, driven by forces that included high rents, stagnant wages and a surge in migrants seeking asylum, the federal government reported Friday.

The number of people experiencing homelessness topped 770,000, an increase of 18% over last year and the largest annual jump since the count began in 2007.

The report, released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, showed that homelessness rose by a third in the past two years, after declining modestly over the previous decade.

While the report cited multiple reasons for the recent rise, including the end of pandemic-era measures to protect the needy, Biden administration officials on a call with reporters emphasized the role of asylum-seeking migrants who overwhelmed the shelter systems where much of the increase occurred. The officials argued that, since the annual count occurred in January, the migrant crisis had begun to abate.

“This data is nearly a year old and no longer reflects the situation we are seeing,” Adrianne Todman, the acting housing secretary, said in a prepared statement.

The government does not track the migration status of homeless people, so it is hard to disentangle the twin crises of domestic poverty and foreigners fleeing troubled lands — distinct challenges with different solutions. But the record-breaking rise in unhoused people is likely to widen the growing partisan divide over homelessness policy.

Democrats typically blame housing costs, flagging wages and scarce rental subsidies, while supporting Housing First policies, which house the chronically homeless without requiring treatment for mental illness or substance abuse.

Many Republicans seek cuts in housing aid and other social services and blame what they call liberal permissiveness. They want to require unhoused people to seek psychiatric or substance abuse help as a condition of support. President-elect Donald Trump has called for clearing cities of encampments and for placing unhoused people into camps.

“This is just a horrible increase, and it shatters any myth that Housing First is working,” said Robert Marbut, who served as the federal homelessness coordinator during Trump’s first term. He dismissed the idea that migration was the primary reason homelessness rose.

Nearly every category of unhoused people grew, with the rise especially steep among children (33%) and people in families (39%). The number of people in shelters rose by about a quarter, while unsheltered homeless rose 7%. The rise in homelessness among older adults continued as well, with a 6% growth in those 65 or older.

The report found that veterans were the lone group to see a decline in homelessness last year. That continues a long-term trend driven by bipartisan support for housing and services for the politically popular group, a collaboration at odds with the rancor of the broader homelessness debate. The number of homeless veterans fell by 8% last year.

More than a third of people experiencing homelessness — 274,000 — sleep in cars, encampments and tents under bridges, places where the risks of violence and illness are especially high.

While California has recently been the epicenter of the homelessness crisis, homelessness there rose just 3%, much less than the national average.

The state has invested tens of billions in recent years in housing and services.

Dennis Culhane, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has long advised the government on homelessness data, said that about three-quarters of the increase in homelessness occurred in the four states hit hardest by asylum-seekers — New York, Illinois, Colorado and Massachusetts — along with Hawaii, where wildfires in Maui fueled mass displacement. Absent migration and natural disasters, he said, homelessness would likely have risen by single digits.

“I’m concerned that people are going to misinterpret this report and think there’s been a big rise in domestic homelessness,” he said. “These numbers shouldn’t be used to attack Housing First.”

Among the evidence pointing toward migration as a driving force, he said, were timing (the rise began with the surge in asylum-seekers in 2022), location and ethnicity. The number of Latinos experiencing homelessness grew by almost a third, nearly twice the national rate.

Chicago and Denver are among cities reporting sharp declines in shelter populations since the January count.

Some analysts, conservative and progressive alike, said that focusing on migration hides the larger issues at play, including economic inequality and homelessness policy.

“As long as we are still in an affordable housing crisis, we are going to continue to see an increase in homelessness,” said Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, an advocacy group that supports increased spending on homeless services.

Oliva noted that homelessness grew among some groups unlikely to include many recent asylum-seekers. They include the chronically homeless, whose numbers have grown nearly 20% over two years, and families in rural areas.

Other advocates have quietly warned that emphasizing the presence of migrants in shelters could increase their risk of deportation.

Stephen Eide of the conservative Manhattan Institute argued that migration did less to drive homelessness than to expose the flaws of the services system, which encourages people to enter shelters to get aid.

“To some extent, homelessness policy can create homelessness,” he said.

Conservatives have grown increasingly critical of Housing First policies, which guide federal aid and once enjoyed bipartisan support.

Supporters say the approach is backed by evidence showing that Housing First policies get troubled people off the streets and save lives. Most veterans programs use the approach, and homelessness among that group has fallen by more than half over the past 15 years.

But conservatives, including many faith-based service providers, say the approach allows people to avoid taking responsibility for their problems and leads to repeated bouts of homelessness.

Housing First’s dominance of federal aid, they say, discourages innovation.

“We’ve stopped treating mental illness and substance abuse,” Marbut said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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