WASHINGTON — The Department of Housing and Urban Development helped more than 94,000 households exit homelessness or avoid losing their homes this year, according to new figures released by the federal agency.
The households benefited from public housing or housing vouchers, HUD said. Specifically, about 8,200 households used public housing, while the rest used a mix of vouchers.
The Biden administration has set a goal of reducing homelessness by 25% by 2025. The White House said this year it would provide federal funding for certain cities and California to help tackle homelessness.
“HUD and our community partners have acted aggressively to end homelessness by working with communities to get people into housing and provide the resources necessary to help prevent people from ever becoming homeless,” HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge said in a statement first shared with NBC News.
HUD could not provide statistics on how the 94,000 compared to last year because of a different type of reporting, an agency spokesperson said. It also did not provide numbers for how many people were homeless this year, saying in Wednesday’s news release that more data would be available in 2024.
More than 582,000 people experienced homelessness in the U.S. last year, according to a 2022 report by HUD. The figure was in line with that of 2020 and significantly lower than a decade ago, when about 621,000 people experienced homelessness on a given night. HUD said figures from 2021 were “considerably impacted” by Covid.
HUD announced this year that it would provide more than $3.1 billion in funding for homeless services organizations.
