There were 567,715 people who experienced homelessness during a point-in-time count conducted in January 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) annual report published Jan. 9.
This represents roughly 17 out of every 10,000 people in the U.S.
During the last 10 days of January each year, HUD conducts an annual point-in-time estimate that “provides counts of beds in emergency shelters, transitional housing programs, safe havens, rapid rehousing programs, permanent supportive housing programs and other permanent housing.”
Point-in-time counts for 2020 are currently underway, and the results will be released in January 2021.
The 2019 count is around 15,000 more than the 2018 count (a 2.7% increase), marking the third year in a row the total count of homeless / unhoused persons has risen.
The total unhoused persons identified in the annual count declined each year from 2007 to 2016 – a 97,330-person drop during this time period.
Since 2016, the total has risen each year – a 17,787-person increase over the past three years.
Of the roughly 568,000 unhoused persons in 2019, 63% spent the night in either emergency shelters or transitional housing, while 37% were unsheltered.
This is a 2% decline and 2% increase, respectively, from the 2018 point-in-time count, and represents the second year in a row the number of unsheltered persons has increased.
Since 2007, the number of unhoused persons spending the night in shelters has ebbed and flowed between a high of 403,543 people in 2010 to a low of 356,422 in 2019.
The number of unsheltered persons in the point-in-time counts saw an overall decline from 2007 to 2015 (an all-time low of 173,268) before rising each year and surpassing the 200,000 mark for the first time since 2012.
The full report is available here.
