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The number of people living on New York City’s streets and subways increased slightly to its highest level in nearly two decades, according to the results of an annual overnight field survey released by the city Thursday.
The survey, conducted in January, found that around 4,140 people were experiencing homelessness, an increase of 2.4 percent from 4,042 last year and the highest figure since 2005, when the city started investigating in January or February.
The cause: Migrants are not the reason, says the city.
The increase comes as the city struggles to provide shelter for up to 70,000 migrants each night.
But the city’s Human Services Commissioner, Molly Wasow Park, said in an interview Thursday that the city sees no evidence of a “systemic increase in the number of homeless people who are asylum seekers.”
The city monitors homeless people — people living on the streets, on subways or in parks — near migrant service centers, such as around the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, and frequently checks in with teams Proximity.
Last month, the city started applying a 30 day limit on how long single adult migrants can stay in shelters. Ms. Park said that while authorities do not expect an increase in the number of migrants living on streets and subways, it is “something we will monitor very closely.”
Finding solutions: The city has made efforts to house people.
The increase has occurred even as the city has ramped up efforts to move homeless people into permanent, subsidized housing. This mainly involves placing them in so-called supported housing, with social services on site, or in private or semi-private rooms in shelters with fewer rules, rather than in restrictive shelters, similar to barracks.
Since Mayor Eric Adams took office in January 2022, the city has housed 2,000 homeless people in permanent housing. This includes 500 people with whom social workers came into contact in the metro, where the mayor made a big effort to eliminate homelessness. The supply of less restrictive shelter beds has increased under Mr. Adams’ leadership, to 4,000 beds, and the city plans to open an additional 500 beds by the end of the year.
Still, Ms Park said it is difficult to reduce street homelessness because people who sleep outside or on the transit system “have been abandoned by all levels of society and all levels of government.”
David Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group, said that while the coalition applauded the increase in shelters with fewer rules, “it’s nowhere near the number needed, these beds are full every night and there are still thousands of people sleeping homeless in New York.
The trend toward unsheltered homelessness depends on where you go. Compared to 2023, the number of people living on the streets increased 46% in Queens and more than doubled on Staten Island, to about 100 people, up from about 40 last year, according to someone who seen the data but is not authorized to discuss it. . In Brooklyn, that figure dropped 12 percent. In Manhattan, where most homeless people are located, that number increased by 4 percent.
Behind the numbers: questions arise about reliability.
Critics often question the reliability of the survey, known as the HOPE estimate, which is federally mandated nationwide and conducted in New York by a mix of volunteers and outreach workers . By federal decree, it takes place one night, during the coldest time of the year. (The weather on the night of the 2024 survey was almost identical to that of 2023.)
Mr. Giffen said HOPE’s estimate underestimates the homeless population so significantly that it is “meaningless.”
He said that more than a year and a half ago, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic – when HOPE’s estimate was lower than it is now – the coalition found that 9,200 people had agreed to engaging with outreach workers, and then agreeing to be referred to shelters, a “fraction of a fraction” of the number of people who had to be homeless during this time.
Another measure of homelessness, number of people registered with the workload of street awareness teams, shows a stronger increase than HOPE’s estimate: The 2024 figure for the quarter ending March 31 was up 15% from the same period in 2023 and 85% from 2022, when the mayor Adams took office. These numbers may be due in part to increased awareness.
