Special Report
This Is the State With the Most Homeless People: Every State Ranked
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An estimated 653,104 people experienced homelessness on a single night in 2023 — a 12% increase (or about 70,650 more people) from 2022 and the highest since reporting began in 2007, according to point-in-time estimates from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The rise in homelessness is largely due to a sharp increase in the number of people who became homeless for the first time, and is likely due to the expiration of pandemic-era measures, “the worsening affordable housing crisis, and recent changes in the rental housing market,” the HUD explains. Though broken during the pandemic, the increase continues the pre-pandemic trend from 2016 to 2020. Among the unhoused, 60% were staying in sheltered locations, while 40% were experiencing unsheltered homelessness.
To find the state with the most homeless people, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed homelessness data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. To rank the states and the District of Columbia, we used point-in-time estimates of homelessness by state in 2023 divided by state population totals to get to the rate of homelessness per 10,000 people. States and D.C. are ranked by this rate from lowest to highest. All homelessness data is from the HUD. State population totals are from the Census Bureau Vintage 2023.
The rate of homelessness per 10,000 people among U.S. states ranges from 3.3 to 72.5. Nationwide, nearly 20 people experienced homelessness for every 10,000 Americans. (Also see: American Cities Hit Hardest By Extreme Poverty.)
The 10 places with the highest homelessness rates are all either in the Northeast or West regions. Among the top 10 are also the two noncontiguous states, Hawaii and Alaska. At the other end, the 10 states with the lowest rate of people who experience homelessness are mostly Southern, though three are in the Midwest and one in the Northeast. (And this is the county with the highest poverty rate in every state.)
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