Important Takeaways:

• Homelessness in the U.S. jumped 18.1% this year, hitting a record level, with the dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in some regions of the country, federal officials said 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 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said in its new report. The estimate likely undercounts the number of unhoused people given that it doesn’t include people staying with friends or family because they don’t have a place of their own.
• Vulnerable Americans have been hard hit during the post-pandemic years as many government supports ended, including the eviction moratorium. At the same time, housing costs are surging, causing a record number of renters to be cost-burdened, or paying more than 30% of their income on housing, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
• California, the most populous state in the U.S., continued to have the nation’s largest homeless population, followed by New York, Washington, Florida and Massachusetts.

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