Homicide made a more conspicuous jump in 2020 — indeed the largest jump in modern records, though overall rates stayed well below the levels experienced as normal in American cities just a few decades earlier. Nationally, homicide rates remained high in 2021 and then, after falling a bit in 2022, had what might have been the largest national decline in total homicides in 2023.
In New York City, homicide rates rose in 2020 and 2021 but did not reach the level experienced as recently as 2011; in San Francisco, there were fewer killings in 2020 than in 2017. A report by the Council on Criminal Justice released last month showed rates across 32 major American cities have fallen substantially, though they remain above prepandemic levels. As Jeff Asher wrote in a national review, many cities are now recording fewer annual homicides than they have in years or even decades. And while murders are still rising in Memphis and Washington, “they are the outliers this year, not the norm.”
Homelessness is a more nuanced story. According to an authoritative annual report published in December by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the number of Americans experiencing unsheltered homelessness was 256,000 in 2023, up from 226,000 just before the pandemic — an increase of about 13 percent. The lowest number in recent history, according to HUD, was 173,000 in 2015; the highest was 255,000 in 2007. The recent increases are tragic and demand public attention but also are gradual; for every 10 unsheltered Americans on the eve of the pandemic, there are now 11.
The bulk of the homelessness is concentrated in a handful of states: California, which accounts for more than a quarter of the national total, New York, Florida, Washington and Texas. But in California as a whole, homelessness grew only 6 percent from 2020 to 2022, according to HUD; in New York State, it fell by almost 19 percent.
In certain cities, there was more disconcerting growth. Nearly a quarter of national homelessness is experienced in New York City and Los Angeles, according to HUD. The population in New York grew from nearly 78,000 just before the pandemic to 88,000 in 2023; in Los Angeles the number of people experiencing homelessness grew by about 12 percent from 2022 to 2023. And although San Francisco is often described as the country’s homelessness epicenter, from 2013 to 2022, homelessness grew by just 6 percent there; between 2019 and 2022, the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in the city actually fell to 4,400 from 5,200. In general, the pandemic years have not been a new era for urban homelessness in America but an extension of the longer-term trend: Homelessness is steadily growing, and its concentration in a small number of cities suggests, among other remedies, the straightforward need for much more housing supply.
