|
On December 15, 2023, HUD released its 2023 Annual Homeless Assessment Report: Part 1: Point-in-Time Estimates, an annual snapshot of the number of individuals in shelters, temporary housing, and in unsheltered settings. The report found more than 650,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2023, a 12 percent increase from 2022. The report also includes the Housing Inventory Count of shelter and housing resources to serve people experiencing homelessness.
The rise in homelessness at the beginning of 2023 continued a pre-pandemic trend from 2016 to 2020, when homelessness also increased. President Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) – the largest single-year investment in preventing and ending homelessness in U.S. history – prevented a rise in homelessness between 2020 and 2022. Many of these ARP resources have now expired or wound down, which has contributed to the increase in homelessness.
In the nearly one year since the 2023 PIT Count was conducted, the Biden-Harris Administration has taken sweeping new steps that are yielding results: through implementation of the Housing Supply Action Plan, more apartments are on track to be built this year than any year on record; this week, HUD announced that it has helped more than 424,000 households connect to homeless support services, exit homelessness, or avoid homelessness altogether in 2023; and earlier this month, VA announced that it has housed more than 38,000 homeless veterans, meeting its goal for 2023 two months early.
HUD data indicate that the rise in overall homelessness is largely due to a sharp rise in the number of people who became homeless for the first time. Between federal fiscal years 2021 and 2022, the number of people who became newly homeless increased by 25 percent, even as the number of people who exited homelessness to permanent housing increased by 8 percent. This rise in first-time homelessness is likely attributable to a combination of factors, including but not limited to, the recent changes in the rental housing market and the winding down of pandemic protections and programs focused on preventing evictions and housing loss. Most notably, rental housing conditions were extraordinarily challenging in the year preceding the January 2023 PIT count. This rate of rent growth has now moderated thanks to housing under construction becoming available to rent in the coming year, but the supply shortage of 2022 likely contributed to this increase in rents and homelessness in 2022.
|
