The U.S. has recorded its highest level of homelessness in history amid influx of migrants into the country and end of COVID-19 restrictions fuel jump, according to a report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
According to the New York Times, over 770,000 people are estimated to be experiencing homelessness in the United States in 2024, which is the largest annual increase recorded since the count began in 2007.
It also represents an 18 per cent increase in the figures that were recorded in 2023. Nearly every category of unhoused people grew, with the rise especially steep among children and people in families, the report noted.
According to the report, data showed that homelessness had increased by third in the past two years, after years of minimal changes.
The agency blamed factors such as “our worsening national affordable-housing crisis,” inflation and the end of certain aid programs from the pandemic, the Times reported.
U.S. officials stressed that the rise in asylum-seeking migrants has saturated the country’s shelter systems — millions of undocumented migrants entered into the country in 2024 alone.
With the government not currently tracking the migration status of homeless people, it is difficult to distinguish domestic and foreign populations as Democrats and Republicans shift the blame on one another.
