December 31, 2024
Courtenay Harris Bond/Philly Voice
On Jan. 22, Philadelphia will hold its annual point-in-time count to record the number of people experiencing homelessness in the city. The number of people who are homeless rose 18% nationwide between 2023 and 2024, according to a new federal report. Pictured here is a homeless encampment in Center City in 2020.
The number of people who are homeless in Philadelphia continues to rise, following a national trend, a city official said Tuesday, citing unofficial counts.
Nationwide, more than 770,000 people were experiencing homelessness on the January 2024 night that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development conducted its annual point-in-time count. That "historically high number" means about 23 of every 10,000 people experienced homelessness in an emergency shelter, safe haven, transitional housing program or outdoors in abandoned structures and other locations in 2024, a HUD report released last week said.
Nearly all populations "reached record levels" of homelessness, the report said. Most prominently, the number of families with children experiencing homelessness rose nearly 40% in one year.
There were 12,762 people experiencing homelessness in New Jersey in 2024, a 24% increase. That surge mostly was due to state-level homelessness prevention services expiring, in particular a moratorium on evictions, the report said. The New Jersey housing market also has become increasingly unaffordable. Pennsylvania saw a 12% increase in homelessness to 14,088 people.
However, HUD officials cited Chester County as one of the places where homelessness fell, praising efforts to increase the availability of affordable housing, reduce evictions and provide housing programs for migrant workers for a drop off in 2024. Since 2019, homelessness has fallen by nearly 60% in the suburban Philly county.
In Philadelphia, increased costs of living, lack of affordable housing and high numbers of people with undiagnosed or untreated behavioral health issues continue to drive up rates of homelessness, said Cheryl Hill, executive director of the city's Office of Homeless Services.
The federal numbers released last week are based on data collected in jurisdictions all over the country on Jan. 24, 2024. Synthesizing those numbers at the federal level takes longer than it does for cities and towns to report their data at the local level.
The findings from Philadelphia's count, conducted on the same day, were released in September. They showed homelessness increased for the third year in a row, with 5,191 people experiencing homelessness. The number of people sleeping outside or in other places not meant for human habitation rose 38%, from 706 to 976. The number of people in safe havens, emergency shelters and transitional housing rose 5%, from 4,019 to 4,215.
Those figures likely will be even higher when the next point-in-time count happens on Jan. 22, and they're also likely an underestimate of the actual number of people experiencing homelessness, Hill said.
"The point-in-time count definitely helps us get a starting understanding of what is needed out there, but we recognize that for every person that we see on the streets, there are several others that may be in abandoned buildings or cars that aren't being counted," Hill said.
Approximately one-third of Philadelphia's homeless population lives in Kensington, which is also a large open-air drug market. A homeless encampment in Kensington in 2017 is pictured here.
In recent months, after someone shared the phone number to the city's homeless prevention information line on social media, the Office of Homeless Services was flooded with calls, Hill said. The line typically receives about 1,500 calls during the year, but it received about 4,000 in a month.
"It just really shined a light on the number of people who need assistance," Hill said.
OHS works with 60 organizations to provide emergency and temporary housing to people experiencing homelessness and others at risk. The department temporarily has stopped processing new requests for homeless prevention help until it has finished assisting the influx of people who contacted the department, Hill said.
In the meantime, OHS has added 200 additional winter beds for people experiencing homelessness. The department also is testing a program that gives people an assigned bed for the season – as long as they consistently show up and follow the rules of the provider. In the past, they had to go night-by-night to shelters, Hill said.
"The goal is to be able to engage individuals on a consistent basis, and hopefully be able to move them and transition into the next step of a longer term housing solution," she said.
Through another pilot program, OHS is adding a handful of beds at a personal care home for people who cannot be served at shelters due to medical or behavioral health needs. The goal is to develop a long-term solution for those people so they do not have a break in services, Hill said.
The pilot programs will help OHS learn more about effective ways to address needs of the city's homeless population, Hill said.
Some experiences of people who are homeless increase their risk of various adverse health effects, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
• Staying in congregate settings like homeless shelters increases risk for respiratory infections like TB and COVID-19.
• Stress, uncertainty and threats to safety while experiencing homelessness increase risk for mental illnesses, such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
• Injection drug use and limited access to safe use supplies increases risk for Viral Hepatitis, HIV and other bloodborne pathogens.
• Structural and social barriers to health care and other social services can lead to worse health outcomes, such as severe illness or death.
Philadelphia is still seeking volunteers for its point-in-time count on Jan. 22. It starts at 10 p.m. Volunteers can sign up online.
