On Friday’s broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” NPR National Correspondent Jennifer Ludden stated that the report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that found a record number of homeless people is “widely considered an undercount.” And, according to HUD officials, the biggest factor in the record number is “the skyrocketing rents that we’ve seen in the past few years. They also cite the recent increase in migrants coming to the U.S.” who don’t have places to live.
Ludden stated that the number “is a count that takes place all around the country, every January. It’s compiled by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And this year, it found 770,000 people living in shelters or outside on streets, in parks, in their cars. That is up 18% from last year, and it is the largest number since they started doing this report in 2007. … It is — I should also note — an undercount. It’s widely considered an undercount. This is a snapshot, one night in each place. It does not include people who may be crowding in with family or friends.”
She continued, “Now, to explain this rise, HUD officials and others point, above all, to the skyrocketing rents that we’ve seen in the past few years. They also cite the recent increase in migrants coming to the U.S. without a place to live, especially migrant families, and extreme weather disasters, for example, the fire in Maui last year.”
She added that officials believe the numbers might have gone down from that snapshot because “for one thing, in June, President Biden took action to limit asylum claims and cap illegal border crossings. Since then, HUD officials say that cities like Denver, Chicago, and New York, who’ve really been overwhelmed with asylum seekers, have reported a dramatic drop in migrants in their shelters. Also, the number of homeless veterans fell this year to a record low. That was one bright spot in the report, and there has been a lot of spending on subsidized housing for them. Rents are also not going up as much. They’re even down in some places.”
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