Migrant crisis pushes US homelessness to record high in 2024

By Kriston Capps

Homelessness in the US soared to its highest level since the federal government began keeping track nearly 20 years ago, according to a new report from the Biden administration, driven by high rents and a lack of affordable options but also a crush of migrants claiming asylum at the US border with Mexico.

Nearly 772,000 people were counted as homeless on a single night in January 2024, an 18 per cent increase over the prior year’s count, which itself set a record for the number of homeless people nationwide. The count includes more than 80,000 families with children, whose ranks grew dramatically — up 39 per cent over 2023.

This surge in family homelessness as well as unsheltered homelessness — up about 7 per cent — is due in part to the state of the border back in January, when an influx of migrants overwhelmed shelter systems in New York City, Denver, Chicago and other cities. That crisis has abated since June, when President Joe Biden took executive action to clamp down on asylum claims, according to officials from the White House and US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Unlawful border crossings are down substantially.

“While homelessness increased nationally, the intensity of the increase appears to be driven by a small number of communities that were heavily impacted by migration,” says Marion McFadden, principal deputy assistant secretary for HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development.

HUD generates its annual point-in-time estimate from counts conducted across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and US territories. In recent years the count has shown a demographic shift across the country. Older adults and minorities continue to be overrepresented among homeless people, but today there are far more families with children — tens of thousands more than the 717 found in the 2010 count.

The PIT count doesn’t collect data about immigration status, but 13 communities that conducted counts volunteered the border crisis as a significant factor. Together those 13 communities reported a 64 per cent spike in homelessness, with double-digit increases in family homelessness; by contrast, 373 other communities that conducted counts but didn’t mention immigration reported a collective increase of 7 per cent.

Biden administration officials say that the count, based on a snapshot taken in January, is unrepresentative due to the drop in migrant arrivals to US cities as well as natural disasters.

For example, in Denver — one of the top destinations for migrants in the country — officials closed the last of its migrant-only homeless shelters earlier this month. The city says that it took in some 40,000 migrants across a network of nine migrant shelters over two years.

“We don’t have a single encampment for migrants in this city,” says Denver Mayor Mike Johnston.

Denver set up separate shelter systems to treat homeless and migrant populations. For migrants, the city worked aggressively to expedite work authorizations and asylum applications; for the city’s local homeless population, Denver purchased a number of hotels with federal dollars to stand up 1,000 units of transitional housing and closed encampments downtown. Denver counted its newly arriving migrants separately from its homeless population and, as a result, the city is a rare bright spot in the PIT: Excluding people in migrant-only shelters, Denver reported a decline in unsheltered homelessness of 11 per cent, with a decline in unsheltered family homelessness of 83 per cent.

On the other hand, Chicago, another city with a huge migration wave, did include its newly arriving population in its PIT count — so the city’s numbers exploded. Chicago’s January count of roughly 19,000 sheltered and unsheltered homeless people includes 14,000 newly arriving migrants, according to Chicago Chief Homelessness Officer Sendy Soto. But since January, the number of new arrivals has waned, and the city is shuttering its migrant shelter system before the end of the year.

“Now that the number of people coming into Chicago from the border has decreased quite a bit, we no longer need to operate this two-shelter system,” says Soto.

New York City also announced earlier in December that it was winding down 25 migrant shelters as the number of asylum seekers falls.

The January 2024 count also includes thousands of people displaced by the August 2023 wildfire in Hawaii, which destroyed more than 2,000 homes in the town of Lahaina alone. In Maui some 5,200 people were sleeping in disaster shelters in January 2024, whereas there weren’t any residents in disaster shelters the previous year.

Homelessness has increased over the last 10 years as a result of skyrocketing housing costs. Rents have climbed 1.5 times faster than wages over the last four years, with housing costs outpacing salaries in 44 out of the 50 top US metros. While the construction of apartment units has reached its highest level in decades, bringing badly needed housing supply to lower costs, the Federal Reserve has warned that rent inflation may not fall back to pre-pandemic levels until 2026. Competition for increasingly scarce affordable units has pushed many families to the brink, including households with unstable housing who are not captured in counts of shelter beds.

The January 2024 count did include some positive findings: Veteran homelessness is down by nearly 8 per cent since 2023 and down more than 55 per cent since 2010. On Dec. 27, the Biden administration announced $40 million in new funding for HUD-Veteran Affairs Supportive Housing vouchers, the Obama-era tool that has helped to curb veteran homelessness.

“The program itself is specialized. The way it’s structured is very important, and a good indicator of how this problem can be attacked,” says Richard Monocchio, principal deputy assistant secretary of HUD’s Office of Public and Indian Housing.

The Biden administration set out with a plan to substantially decrease homelessness across the US by partnering with local leaders and helping them to set ambitious targets for housing vulnerable populations. Some cities such as Denver and San Antonio met or exceeded those goals. In its January 2024 count, Los Angeles reported a decline in its homeless population for the first time in six years. But in a broader sense, the problem of homelessness has grown more severe under Biden’s watch.

According to a senior administration official, the upcoming January 2025 count will give a more accurate picture of local progress on the issue, especially in cities that have seen a dramatic drop in new arrivals since border restrictions were tightened.