During the last 10 days of January, public officials, nonprofit employees, and volunteers in thousands of communities will tromp through alleyways, parks, and culverts to conduct the 2020 annual census of the homeless. Their efforts, combined with tallies of the people in shelters, will produce the “Point in Time” counts that tell us the extent of homelessness in America.
The 2019 census data were released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in the agency’s Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, on January 7. The report found there were about 568,000 homeless people nationwide on a winter’s night in January 2019. Nearly two-thirds of the homeless were in shelters or transitional housing programs. Over one-third were “unsheltered” — sleeping in cars or abandoned buildings, or camping on sidewalks and in parks.
While far from perfect, these data provide the best available picture of regional and national trends in homelessness. Nationally, the trend is troubling: the homeless population increased for the third year in a row, and the 2.7 percent increase in homelessness from 2018 to 2019 is the largest yet.
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