New York Homelessness Jumped 53% as the State Spent Billions
Summary
New York's homeless point-in-time count rose 53.1% in a single year -- from January 2023 to January 2024 -- to 158,019 people, about 1 in 5 of everyone homeless in America, the State Comptroller reports. Every region rose, from 11% to 138%. Yet for the State's five-year, $25 billion housing plan, the Comptroller finds 'little detail is available to track goals, accomplishments and the status of resources committed.'
The Comptroller ties most of the surge to the arrival of asylum seekers; reported they accounted for 88% of the rise in New York City's sheltered homelessness⧉. But the crisis increasingly falls on children. Homeless people in families nearly tripled, from 34,805 to 95,457⧉, now 60.4% of the total; the number of homeless children more than doubled, to 50,773.
View data as table
| Glens Falls / Saratoga | 138% | to 529 homeless -- the state's largest increase |
|---|---|---|
| Newburgh / Orange Co. | 130% | to 779 homeless |
| New York City | 127% | to 140,134 homeless -- 93% of the statewide increase |
| Buffalo / Erie-Niagara | 81% | to 1,549 homeless |
| Syracuse / Onondaga | 67% | to 1,192 homeless |
| Nassau / Suffolk | 32% | to 4,002 homeless |
| Yonkers / Westchester | 19% | to 1,611 homeless |
| Poughkeepsie / Dutchess | 11% | to 705 homeless -- the smallest regional increase |
New York City drove 93% of the statewide increase, but no region was spared: increases ran from 11% in Poughkeepsie/Dutchess to 138% in the Glens Falls/Saratoga area⧉, a 127-point spread. Meanwhile the State is mid-way through a five-year $25 billion housing plan⧉ to create or preserve 100,000 homes -- yet the Comptroller finds "little detail is available to track goals, accomplishments and the status of resources committed," and urges the State to "greatly enhance reporting" so program effectiveness can be judged.
The takeaway
- A one-year jump with few peers. New York's homeless count rose 53.1% from January 2023 to January 2024 -- more than four times the rest of the nation's rate, trailing only Hawaii, Illinois and Massachusetts. At 158,019, the state held about 1 in 5 of the country's homeless.
- It's a family and child crisis now. Homeless people in families nearly tripled in two years (34,805 to 95,457) and are 60.4% of the total; homeless children more than doubled, to 50,773. New York also shelters almost everyone -- 3.6% unsheltered, the lowest share in the nation, versus 43.8% elsewhere.
- Billions committed, outcomes unclear. The State's five-year $25 billion housing plan aims to create or preserve 100,000 homes, but the Comptroller finds 'little detail is available to track goals, accomplishments and the status of resources committed,' and recommends the State greatly enhance reporting so effectiveness can be measured.
This is not a finding that the State's housing spending failed or was misused. The Comptroller attributes the 2022-2024 surge chiefly to the arrival of asylum seekers -- a driver largely outside the housing plan's scope -- and the $25 billion plan targets affordable-housing production broadly, not homelessness alone. The transparency gap is a separate point: the report says outcomes for those resources cannot currently be tracked. Two time windows appear here and are not the same: the 53.1% figure is the single-year change (January 2023 to January 2024), while the regional Continuum-of-Care figures and the family/child counts are two-year changes (2022 to 2024). All figures are point-in-time counts as analyzed by the Comptroller.
Sources(2) ▾
- Office of the New York State Comptroller (Thomas P. DiNapoli), Office of Budget and Policy Analysis, New Yorkers in Need: Homelessness in New York State (2025-01) — The State Comptroller's January 2025 Economic and Policy Insights report on homelessness in New York, prepared by OSC's Office of Budget and Policy Analysis. Source for the 53.1% single-year (Jan 2023-Jan 2024) statewide increase, the 158,019 statewide 2024 point-in-time count and New York's share of the national total, the regional Continuum-of-Care breakdown in Figure 5 (2022-2024), the family/child demographic surge, the 3.6% unsheltered share, the five-year $25 billion state housing plan and the report's finding that 'little detail is available to track goals, accomplishments and the status of resources committed,' and its recommendation that the State enhance reporting on housing-assistance resources. Fetched directly from the issuer domain and converted with pdftotext -layout. osc.ny.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD Releases January 2024 Point-In-Time Count Report (2024-12-27) — 's December 27, 2024 announcement of the 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report, the underlying federal source for the point-in-time counts the Comptroller analyzes. Used only to corroborate the national context -- a record national total of more than 770,000 people homeless on a single night in January 2024, an 18% increase from 2023. Every New York-specific figure in this article traces to the OSC report, not to this release. archives.hud.gov · original document
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Homelessness in New York State rose 53.1% in a single year -- from January 2023 to January 2024 -- more than four times the pace in the rest of the country, per the State Comptroller's January 2025 report⧉. The state's January 2024 point-in-time count hit 158,019 people⧉, about 1 in 5 of everyone homeless in America -- up from 1 in 7 a year earlier.