Homelessness among American veterans increased this year by its largest margin since the US started tracking
- The homeless population reached 650,000 people in January, a record high.
- Among the total number of homeless people counted, there were over 35,000 veterans.
The homeless population in America has reached a record high.
Over 650,000 people were homeless on a single night last January, according to a point-in-time analysis from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that was released Friday.
That number includes more than 35,000 homeless veterans, making up about 7% of all adults experiencing homelessness that night. In January, about 20,000 homeless veterans were sheltered, and about 15,500 were unsheltered.
That means some 22 of every 10,000 veterans in America were homeless at the time of the analysis, which concluded that it was "somewhat more common for veterans to experience homelessness than for all people in the United States."
The data has its limitations. The department has only been tracking homeless veterans since 2009, when there were over 73,000 homeless veterans reported in total. Data for 2020-2021 is also incomplete due to data collection obstacles caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still, the number of homeless vets from 2022 to 2023 spiked by the largest margin since the department began measuring homelessness using its January point-in-time analysis in 2009.
"Between 2022 and 2023, the number of veterans experiencing homelessness increased by 7%," amounting to 2,445 additional veterans, the HUD analysis found.
While the increased homelessness is cause for concern, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced last month that it had actually met its goal of housing a total of 38,000 veterans in 2023.
"While we met our goals for 2023, we're not stopping here. We're going to keep pushing — through the end of this calendar year and beyond — until every Veteran has a safe, stable place to call home in this country they fought to defend," Veteran Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough.