HUD Releases the 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report Part 2

We are pleased to announce the publication of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) Part 2. This is the second of a two-part series that provides estimates of the scale of sheltered and unsheltered homelessness in the U.S. The 2022 Part 1 report, also known as the Point-in-Time Estimates of Homelessness, was published in December 2022 and provided a single-night estimate of people experiencing homelessness in both sheltered and unsheltered settings at the state, local, and national levels. This Part 2 report draws from local administrative data collected by homeless services and reported to HUD to provide a national estimate of people who utilized shelter programs at some point during the Federal fiscal year, October 1, 2021 through September 30, 2022.  

During the time period covered in this report, 1,388,000 people experienced homelessness in sheltered settings, representing a 14 percent increase compared with the prior federal fiscal year. Two-thirds of people experiencing homelessness were in households with only adults present (923,000 people), and 33 percent were people in families with children (453,000 people). The number of families with children who used shelters increased by almost 20 percent in the last year. Despite these increases, the number of people experiencing sheltered homelessness over the course of the year remains 5 percent lower than prior to the pandemic.

In addition to providing overall numbers, this report also provides important data regarding the characteristics of people experiencing homelessness. We see a disturbing increase in the number of older adults experiencing homelessness and the ongoing racial and ethnic disparities that persist. Nearly 20,000 more people over the age of 64 experienced sheltered homelessness in 2022 than did in 2019. About 10,000 older adults were added to the sheltered population in the last year alone. The number of older adults who are chronically homeless—which refers to people who have a disability and who have been homeless for long periods of time— increased by 83% since 2019. While Black or African Americans represent only 13 percent of the overall U.S. population, they represent 39 percent of people experiencing sheltered homelessness. Hispanic or Latino/a/e households who experience homelessness also continued to rise, shifting the population from historically being underrepresented among the sheltered population to overrepresented in an extremely short time period. 

The report’s findings are consistent with the trends observed in the 2023 AHAR Part 1, which reported a 12% increase in homelessness on a single night from January 2022 to January 2023 even while homelessness levels remained relatively stable between January 2020 and January 2022. Both the increases in the January 2023 Point-in-Time estimates and sheltered homelessness during federal fiscal year 2022 reflect the expiration and depletion of pandemic-era protections and programs that prevented people from housing loss and homelessness in the prior year. Taken together, these reports show that when our nation provides large-scale investments in programs that prevent housing loss and that support the re-housing of people experiencing homelessness, we can attenuate the number of people experiencing homelessness even amidst worsening housing needs. They also show what happens when we stop investing in these interventions: homelessness rises. We hope this report inspires greater action to continue to invest in and implement solutions that can help more Americans avoid having to experience the tragedy and indignity of homelessness.