ISLAMABAD: Homelessness in the United States jumped 18.1 per cent in 2024, hitting a new record, due mainly to lack of affordable housing, CBS News reported on Friday.
More than 770,000 people were counted as homeless in federally required tallies taken across the country during a single night in January 2024, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development said in its new report.
Also read the US department’s report here.
The estimate likely undercounts the number of unhoused people given that it does not include people staying with friends or family because they do not have a place of their own, CBS News report states.
Vulnerable Americans have been hard hit during the post-pandemic years as many government supports ended. At the same time, housing costs are surging, causing a record number of renters to be cost-burdened, or paying more than 30 per cent of their income on housing, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
“More people than ever need help paying rent. More people than ever are becoming homeless for the first time,” the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a nonprofit focused on preventing and ending homelessness, wrote on X in a post about the HUD report.
.@HUDgov’s latest report illustrates something the country already knows:
More people than ever need help paying rent.
More people than ever are becoming homeless for the first time.Homelessness is up because our leaders haven’t addressed that. https://t.co/iOQBzCYYEp
— End Homelessness (@naehomelessness) December 27, 2024
23 of every 10,000
The numbers overall represent 23 of every 10,000 people in the U.S., with Black people being overrepresented among the homeless population.
“No American should face homelessness,” HUD Agency head Adrianne Todman said in a statement, adding that the focus should remain on “evidence-based efforts to prevent and end homelessness.”
