The City With Most Homelessness in America Is Not Where You Think

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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The City With Most Homelessness in America Is Not Where You Think

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After a bitter fight between President Trump and politicians in California about the homelessness problem in some of its cities, new research shows just how deep the problem is across major cities in the largest state. However, the city with the highest rate of homelessness is not in California, even if, overall, the state’s large cities rank high among those with the most problems.

The White House has just issued a The State of Homelessness in America report. It puts the homeless into two categories. Those who have found shelters represent about two-thirds of the population, and the other third are found “unsheltered” on the streets. That is about 200,000 people in the U.S on any given night.

When the unsheltered and sheltered populations are combined, Washington, D.C. has 103.3 homeless per 10,000 people, which makes it the city with the highest homelessness level in America. Boston follows at 101.8, New York at 101.5, San Francisco at 94.3 and Santa Rosa in California at 59.8. Each of these cities has figures that are over six times the national rate.

Indeed, almost half (47%) of unsheltered people are found in California. The report points out “Among the five cities with the highest rates of unsheltered homelessness, four are in California (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Rosa, and San Jose), and the other is Seattle.” Here are the states with the most unsheltered homeless people.

There are several political and expert opinions about how to solve the problem. Much of the debate is over affordable housing. However the debate concludes (and it may never be), in cities led by Washington, people live without homes night after night. Here is the city hit hardest by extreme poverty in every state.

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Rate of Homelessness per 10,000 in Continuums of Care With Top Five Highest Rates, 2018

Overall CoC Rate Sheltered CoC Rate Unsheltered CoC Rate
Washington DC 103.3 Boston 99.1 San Francisco 58.9
Boston 101.8 New York 96.7 Los Angeles 40.4
New York 101.5 Washington DC 94.3 Santa Rosa 38.5
San Francisco 94.3 San Francisco 34.4 Seattle 30.9
Santa Rosa 59.8 Baltimore 32.2 San Jose 30.3

Note: Counts are conducted by Continuums of Care (CoCs), which are composed of a single city, a single county, a group of counties or an entire state.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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