2021 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress
AUTHORS: Meghan Henry, Tanya de Sousa, Colette Tano, Nathaniel Dick, Rhaia Hull, Meghan Shea, Tori Morris, and Sean Morris, Abt Associates
February 2022
Key Findings
Because of pandemic-related disruptions to counts of unsheltered homeless people in January 2021, these findings focus on people experiencing sheltered homelessness. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, HUD encouraged communities to determine whether conducting an unsheltered PIT count posed a high risk of exacerbating COVID-19 transmissions, given the lack of widespread access to COVID-19 vaccines at the time. Many CoCs chose to not conduct an unsheltered PIT count because their capacity to conduct counts was limited due to other pandemic-response efforts and the risk of transmitting COVID-19 among people experiencing homelessness, homeless assistance staff, and volunteers. There were 226 communities that conducted either complete or partial counts of unsheltered homelessness, but those communities are not representative of all communities across the United States.
On a single night in 2021, more than 326,000 people were experiencing sheltered homelessness in the United States. Six in ten were individuals—that is, people in households with only adults or in households with only children. Four in ten were people in families with children.
The number of people staying in sheltered locations decreased by eight percent between 2020 and 2021. While this continues a decline that began in 2015, the drop between 2020 and 2021 was steeper than those in recent years. A possible cause for sheltered reduction is that some emergency shelter providers increased the amount of space between people sleeping in congregate settings to reduce their risk of exposure, leading to fewer beds in congregate shelters. Other potential factors that led to the decrease: people’s reluctance to use available shelter beds because of health risk, eviction moratoria, and cash transfers that may have reduced inflow into homelessness. It appears that the unsheltered population did not increase within the communities that conducted unsheltered counts. However, trends on unsheltered homelessness are known for just over half of communities, which accounted for only 22 percent of unsheltered homelessness in 2020.
The number of sheltered people in families with children declined considerably between 2020 and 2021, while the number of sheltered individuals remained relatively flat. In 2021, just over 131,000 people in families with children were experiencing sheltered homelessness, a decline of 15 percent between since 2020. This was a much larger change than in the number of sheltered individuals, which dropped by only 2 percent, to 236,500 people in 2021. Some of the pandemic-related resources available through the CARES Act and other pandemic relief measures were more generous to families with children.
Between 2020 and 2021, the reported emergency shelter and transitional housing inventory available for people experiencing homelessness remained relatively °at, but occupancy rates declined. While the inventory reported by communities did not decline, only 73 percent of reported beds were occupied on the night of the count, compared with 82 percent in 2020. An even smaller percentage of facility-based beds were occupied in January 2021, 71 percent.
The share of emergency shelter beds for people experiencing sheltered homelessness located in non-congregate settings increased by 134 percent. In response to the pandemic, many communities focused their resources on shelter beds located in hotels, motels, or other settings that are not facility-based.
Between 2020 and 2021, the number of sheltered veterans decreased by 10 percent. This represents the largest one-year decline since 2015-2016. In 2021, 19,750 veterans were experiencing sheltered homelessness, representing eight percent of all sheltered adults experiencing homelessness were veterans. Sheltered veterans accounted for 11 out of every 10,000 veterans in the country.
On a single night in 2021, 15,763 people under the age of 25 experienced sheltered homelessness on their own as “unaccompanied youth.” This represents a decline of nine percent between 2020 and 2021. While decreases in sheltered homelessness among unaccompanied youth were experienced across nearly all demographic characteristics, a few groups did experience increases. The number of youth who were transgender increased by 29 percent, and the number of sheltered unaccompanied youth who were gender non-conforming increased by 26 percent. Though the number was relatively small, sheltered unaccompanied youth who were Native American experienced the largest percentage increase, at 21 percent.
The number of sheltered individuals identified as chronically homeless increased by 20 percent between 2020 and 2021. This trend in the sheltered chronically homeless individual population runs counter to the decrease for all sheltered individuals. While the overall sheltered individual population has declined, the number of chronically homeless individuals staying in shelter programs has increased in recent years and continued to do so between 2020 and 2021.
