New HUD Homelessness Data on PolicyMap

Every year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development releases its Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (known as AHAR). This 207 page report provides “national estimates of the extent and nature of homelessness in the United States and the use of homeless assistance programs.” For the report, local communities count all sheltered and unsheltered homeless people on a single night in January. The numbers are aggregated to the state level. The data from the latest report, which covers 2010, is now available on PolicyMap.

This year, for the first time, AHAR included data on Permanent Supportive Housing programs The data shows that, according to the report, “…these programs are successfully keeping people—even the ‘hardest to house’ populations—stably housed. Included on PolicyMap is the count of Permanent Supportive Housing beds in each state.

The data can be accessed on PolicyMap in the Demographics tab of the Data Layer bar, under “Homelessness”. The full report is available here.