Number Of Homeless New Yorkers Surges 40% In Past Year, City Count Shows

NEW YORK CITY, NY – You're not imagining the increase in people you see sleeping on the streets.

Homelessness in New York City has surged by nearly 40 percent in the past year with 3,892 people now without shelter, according to an annual count carried out by the Department of Homeless Services. That compares to 2,794 people living rough the year before.

The rise comes despite an overhaul of homeless outreach carried out by Mayor Bill de Blasio and designed to get people off the streets. It increased the amount of Home-Stat teams which try to persuade homeless people to move into shelters.

The number is the highest recorded since the first Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE) in 2005 when 4,395 people were counted.

This year's count was conducted on February 6.

The city said persuading people to move off the streets and into shelters is a long process which takes an average of five months, and that the work of the bulked-up Home-Stat teams likely hasn't yielded results yet. It said that more than 2,000 homeless people were in contact with team members.

A city spokesman also pointed out that temperatures on the night of this year's count reached 40 degrees, compared to 28 degrees the year before.

"This year's HOPE count confirms what our street outreach teams are seeing daily," said de Blasio.

"We remain undeterred in our efforts to bring New Yorkers off the streets."

Lead image by Jim Forest/Flickr