Maryland was among the states that experienced the largest decreases of sheltered homeless people from 2020 to 2021, but it also saw one of the largest increases of unaccompanied youth in homeless shelters during that period, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
The first part of HUD’s annual homelessness report provides point-in-time estimates of communities’ homeless populations, including total populations and breakdowns of specific demographics. The data was collected on a single night in the last 10 days of January 2021.
HUD added that data could be affected by reduced occupancy in some communities and homeless individuals’ concerns about the safety of staying in shelters due to COVID-19. Therefore, the point-in-time estimates “should be viewed with caution, as the number [of sheltered homeless people] could be artificially depressed compared with non-pandemic times.”
The nationwide population of sheltered homeless people decreased by 8% between 2020 and 2021. That number has been declining since 2015, but dropped more steeply between 2020 and 2021 than in other years, according to the report.
The report shows that Maryland’s total sheltered homeless population decreased by 20% from 5,124 people in 2020 to 4,048 people in 2021.
Within that population, Maryland also saw decreases among chronically homeless individuals (41.8% decrease), homeless families (27.6% decrease), and homeless veterans (33.4% decrease).
But the number of unaccompanied homeless youth in Maryland, including individuals younger than 25 years old, increased from 186 in 2020 to 252 in 2021, a 35.5% increase.
Nationally, the leading reason for changes in the sheltered homeless population was a change in capacity due to COVID-19. Some shelters reduced their bed capacity due to COVID-19 requirements.
In 2021, HUD waived a requirement for communities to count their unsheltered homeless population in an effort to limit the spread of coronavirus, when widespread access to COVID-19 vaccines was limited at the beginning of last year.
HUD said it encouraged communities to determine whether conducting a count of unsheltered homeless people could worsen coronavirus transmission.
Some communities conducted full or partial counts of unsheltered homeless people. Others, including Baltimore City, only counted their community’s sheltered homeless people.
For this reason, the HUD report was only able to provide findings on unsheltered homelessness based on the communities that conducted counts of their unsheltered populations.
“It appears that the unsheltered population did not increase within the communities that conducted unsheltered counts,” the HUD report found.
But HUD added that data on unsheltered homeless people were only collected for just over half of U.S. communities, accounting for only 22% of the nation’s unsheltered homeless population recorded in 2020.
“Under Secretary Marcia L. Fudge’s leadership, HUD is working tirelessly to ensure every American has a stable home and that means doing everything in our power to end homelessness through a Housing First approach,” Matthew Heckles, Regional Administrator of HUD’s Mid-Atlantic region, said in a statement. “HUD’s House America initiative is ensuring we are re-housing people experiencing homelessness and creating additional dedicated housing units to address homelessness. I encourage communities across the region to partner with us on this important initiative.”
The federal House America initiative seeks to provide permanent housing to homeless people and increase the development of affordable housing units.
