Homeless trends shift, but funding formulas don’t keep up
Data shows the one-time fix in calculating homeless aid could have better served cities most in need over the last decade
A (one-time) solution
The U.S. government has poured billions into homeless assistance grants for communities since 1987, awarding $2.7 billion in the last decade alone. But it uses a formula that Congress found had "no real nexus to homeless needs."
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act mandated a one-time change to the formula to push money to where it's most needed, but the law requires homeless grants to return to their old, untargeted formula in 2021.
The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism applied this new formula to previous years’ data to determine how much each city, county and state recipient would have received over the last decade had HUD switched to this formula that’s better-targeted to homelessness in 2011.
Dark-blue areas would have seen dramatic increases in homeless grants compared to what they actually received, while dark red areas would have gotten far less. Yellow represents those places that would have gotten a similar award regardless of which formula was used (within 25%).
Click the circle in the lower left corner for the legend and on the map for specific cities’ homeless funding under the new vs. old HUD formulas.
More cash for coastal cities
New York City would have seen the biggest increase of any city, county or state: an additional $131 million to fight homelessness over 10 years.
The city has consistently sheltered tens of thousands more homeless people than anywhere else in the country, growing from a total of 51,000 in 2011 to top 78,000 total homeless people by the decade’s end.
The city of Los Angeles would have gotten an extra $89 million, while Los Angeles County would have received an additional $30 million.
Los Angeles city and county have the largest unsheltered homeless population in the country: more than 42,000 people in 2019. Their combined $119 million in additional funding could have helped the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority better serve the area’s growing number of homeless people.
San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle round out the top five cities that would have seen funding increases when comparing the new formula calculations to what was actually disbursed.
West Coast homelessness on the rise
California and the Pacific Northwest have seen growing numbers of homeless people in recent years. Had the new formula been in use since 2011, it would have directed an extra $343 million to communities across California.
Washington state’s total would have increased by nearly $36 million, and Oregon would have received an extra $30 million throughout the decade.
Who loses out?
Changing the formula inherently creates winners and losers as money gets redirected. The old formula uses pre-1940s housing stock as one measurement, so older cities in the Midwest and Northeast have traditionally gotten bigger awards than newer, Western and Sun Belt cities, regardless of actual homeless counts.
Chicago would have taken the biggest hit of any place in the country. If the new formula had been used since 2011, Chicago would have received $31 million less in homeless funds than it received over the past decade.
Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland and St. Louis round out the top five decreases among cities. Each would have received millions of dollars less under the new formula.
Smaller cities, urban counties also impacted
Applying the new formula also dramatically decreased the amount of many smaller cities' homeless grants, moving them out of direct HUD funding and into a category of locales that get their federal funding through the state.
For example, Youngstown, Ohio, took in $3 million in direct homeless funding over the last decade. But under the new formula, its 10-year total would have dropped to about $722,000, meaning Youngstown’s money would have gone to the state of Ohio to disperse as it saw fit.
Under the new formula, 81 cities with a population of at least 50,000 and urban counties with at least 200,000 residents would have lost direct funding from HUD. Instead, the department would have awarded their amounts to the respective state programs for further distribution.
Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Puerto Rico had the largest number of cities that would have lost direct funding under the new formula.
Explore the map
Click through the map to see how the one-time CARES Act formula would have impacted your city or county's homeless funding had it been in place over the past decade.
- Read the full investigation at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism's website here .
- Learn more about the data analysis underpinning this map here .
Note: Because of how funding is calculated for the U.S. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, a comparison between the CARES Act and current formulas was not possible. HUD calculates homeless aid for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as if they were states.