This City Has the Most Homeless People in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 17, 3:00PM EST

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This City Has the Most Homeless People in America — © Max Whittaker / Getty Images News via Getty Images

The problem of homelessness has been improved in America over the last several years. While the number of people experiencing homelessness had begun to decline over the decade that just ended, the COVID-19 pandemic may have accelerated this improvement. Cities, including New York, which is the city with the most homeless people in America, have invested billions of dollars to shelter and aid homeless people.

However, the issues involved are involute, and money has not lessened the trouble enough to come close to eliminating homelessness, nor have a raft of social service programs. (This is the city where most people live below the poverty line in every state.)

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has just released its “2021 Annual Homeless Assessment Report Part 1 to Congress.” The report focuses on the sheltered homeless population – who reside in emergency shelters, transitional housing, and similar facilities. Approximately 326,000 people experienced sheltered homelessness on a single night in 2021, an 8% drop from the year before.

The report focuses on three groups – sheltered homeless people with families, sheltered homeless individuals, and sheltered homeless veterans. The number of sheltered families declined, and the number of individuals stayed flat. Some communities that might have provided data did not, so the report should be considered incomplete.

HUD admits much work still needs to be done. Commenting on the report, Secretary Marcia L. Fudge said: “Yet we know that homelessness in America remains an urgent crisis. As long as people in this nation continue to lack affordable, secure housing, our work to put Housing First is not done.” Housing First is a program meant to support permanent housing for those who do not have it. (This is the city where people cannot afford to rent a place to live.)

The report also broke down the number of people experiencing sheltered homelessness by city and state. Four states had almost 50% of the sheltered homeless people – New York (76,051), California (51,429), Massachusetts (13,944), and Florida (13,393).

In terms of the percentage of beds available for those experiencing homelessness, New York state has the highest occupancy rate at 88.3%, followed by New Jersey at 84.7%, and Vermont at 83.9%. At the other end of the spectrum, occupancy in Mississippi is 47.5%, followed by West Virginia at 48.3%.

Among cities, the one with the most people experiencing sheltered homelessness is New York City at 65,975. Second-place Los Angeles is well behind at 17,225.

To find the city with the most homeless people in America, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the HUD report, which listed the places, specifically Continuum of Care, with the highest number of people experiencing sheltered homelessness in 2021. The HUD listed five CoCs with the most homeless people per geographic category – major cities, largely suburban, other largely urban, and largely rural.

Click here to see this city has the most homeless people in America

Oxnard, San Buenaventura/Ventura County, CA
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 949
> Geographical category: Other largely urban

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Spokane City & County, WA
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 992
> Geographical category: Other largely urban

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Anchorage, AK
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 1,167
> Geographical category: Other largely urban

St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Largo/Pinellas County, FL
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 1,305
> Geographical category: Other largely urban

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Saint Paul/Ramsey County, MN
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 1,558
> Geographical category: Other largely urban

Honolulu City and County, HI
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 1,854
> Geographical category: Largely suburban

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Springfield/Hampden County, MA
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 2,218
> Geographical category: Largely suburban

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Santa Ana, Anaheim/Orange County, CA
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 2,441
> Geographical category: Largely suburban

Massachusetts Balance of State
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 2,772
> Geographical category: Largely suburban

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Nassau, Suffolk Counties , NY
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 2,912
> Geographical category: Largely suburban

Wisconsin Balance of State
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 2,291
> Geographical category: Largely rural

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Ohio Balance of State
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 2,336
> Geographical category: Largely rural

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Indiana Balance of State
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 2,385
> Geographical category: Largely rural

Texas Balance of State
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 2,562
> Geographical category: Largely rural

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Washington Balance of State
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 3,462
> Geographical category: Largely rural

District of Columbia
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 4,430
> Geographical category: Major cities

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Seattle/King County, WA
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 5,183
> Geographical category: Major cities

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Metropolitan Denver, CO
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 5,530
> Geographical category: Major cities

Los Angeles City & County , CA
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 17,225
> Geographical category: Major cities

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New York City
> People experiencing sheltered homelessness: 65,975
> Geographical category: Major cities

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.