Homelessness in the United States is an urgent humanitarian and public health crisis that shows no signs of waning. American homelessness reached a record high in 2024, jumping a staggering 18.1% from 2023, which was also a record-breaking year with a 12% rise. Vulnerable Americans have struggled during the post-pandemic years, facing unrelenting challenges such as the termination of the eviction ban, natural disasters, mass migration to larger cities, and skyrocketing housing costs.
A record number of renters have become cost-burdened, meaning they pay over 30% of their income just for housing alone. A report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that the number of homeless people in the U.S. reached over 770,000 on a single January night in 2024, a record that has only been surmounted by the two million homeless during the Great Depression.
Despite the heartbreaking rates of homelessness in the U.S., there is still an abundance of vacant homes. MortgageCalculator.org has created this visual guide to highlight which U.S. states have the most vacant homes per homeless person to help shed light on this complex issue:
How many vacant homes in America exist? There are over 14 million vacant houses across the country, and according to the number of homeless in America in 2023, that equates to around 21.56 vacant housing units per homeless person!
Mississippi has 187.31 vacant homes per homeless person, by far the highest rate in the country. This high rate can be attributed to the state's relatively low overall homeless rate. This may come as a surprise because 19.58% of Mississippi's population is living below the poverty line, the highest poverty rate in the country. However, homelessness is mitigated in Mississippi largely due to the low cost of living (15% below the national average).
Additionally, about 54% of Mississippi's population lives in rural areas, resulting in less competition for housing and lower prices. Of course, there are pros and cons to every economic scenario. Mississippi's largest city, Jackson, is burdened with nearly 25% of the state's total abandoned properties. This creates hot spots for crime, lowers surrounding property values, and discourages growth in those areas.
Homelessness in the U.S. has fluctuated throughout history, with spikes during tumultuous and tragic times such as America's formative years, before the Industrial Revolution, following the Civil War, and during the Great Depression. The early 1980s marked the development of what may now be considered the modern era of homelessness. Many of the factors contributing to the origins of the U.S. homelessness epidemic mirror those that we contend with today. Gentrification of inner cities, high unemployment rates, the deinstitutionalization of people with mental health conditions (a double-edged sword), systematic racism, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, deep budget cuts to social service agencies, and an insufficient supply of affordable housing all carved into the deepening pit of homelessness.
Now, America is experiencing one of the most severe affordable housing crises of all time. Despite the number of empty homes in the U.S., as discussed earlier, no single state has a sufficient supply of affordable rental housing for its lowest-income families. Major cities are the hardest hit. An analysis by Zillow and StreetEasy found that rents in the largest metros catapulted by 30.4% between 2019 and 2023, while wages only increased by 20.2%.
According to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, over half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and are just one crisis away from homelessness. If over half of America is on the brink, it is simply not fair to say homelessness is a personal failing. The agency describes a string of failed policies that have led to the current climate, including significantly underfunded affordable housing programs, housing costs that have historically outpaced wages and inflation (with a recent post-pandemic acceleration), inadequate safety nets, and inequalities in access to health care (especially mental health), education, and economic opportunities. Additionally, mass incarceration has played a role.
Historical and ongoing racism, marked with dehumanizing realities such as slavery, the Indian Removal Act, redlining, and discriminatory application of the justice system, have also fed into a world where homelessness lurks close by. While white Americans experience homelessness at a rate of 11.5 out of 10,000 people, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders experience it at a rate of 159.8 per 10,000, American Indians and Alaskan Natives at 66.6 per 10,000, and African Americans at 55.2 per 10,000. Other marginalized groups, such as the LGBTQ+ community, have a 120% higher risk of experiencing some form of homelessness. There is still much progress needed to create a country that provides equal opportunities for everyone to build a life where they feel safe, secure, and at home.
As mentioned earlier, around 50% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck and are one major expense or crisis away from homelessness. Even families who own their homes are at risk, especially considering that 21.93% of owner-occupied households are “house poor” (or housing cost-burdened) and 44.20% of those severely housing cost-burdened, meaning they spend over 50% of their income on housing costs. Buying a home beyond one’s means can lead to these incredibly stressful situations, especially if a bad credit mortgage is involved. Depending on the area, renting can be more affordable than buying, but housing cost trends have been bulldozing either option across the country.
While every situation is unique, here are some additional resources on avoiding homelessness and how to help the homeless to explore:
| Rank | State | Estimated Number of Homeless People | Number of Vacant Housing Units | Vacant Housing Units per Homeless Person |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | 982 | 183,935 | 187.31 |
| 2 | Alabama | 3,304 | 308,575 | 93.39 |
| 3 | Louisiana | 3,169 | 291,015 | 91.83 |
| 4 | West Virginia | 1,416 | 120,112 | 84.82 |
| 5 | South Carolina | 4,053 | 312,594 | 77.13 |
| 6 | Arkansas | 2,609 | 176,233 | 67.55 |
| 7 | Wyoming | 532 | 32,751 | 61.56 |
| 8 | North Carolina | 9,754 | 586,508 | 60.13 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | 4,861 | 291,849 | 60.04 |
| 10 | Michigan | 8,997 | 535,148 | 59.48 |
| 11 | North Dakota | 784 | 40,065 | 51.10 |
| 12 | Florida | 30,756 | 1,485,421 | 48.30 |
| 13 | Delaware | 1,245 | 59,424 | 47.73 |
| 14 | Virginia | 6,761 | 314,955 | 46.58 |
| 15 | Oklahoma | 4,648 | 199,781 | 42.98 |
| 16 | Missouri | 6,708 | 288,169 | 42.96 |
| 17 | Kansas | 2,636 | 111,591 | 42.33 |
| 18 | Iowa | 2,653 | 111,493 | 42.03 |
| 19 | Texas | 27,377 | 1,134,164 | 41.43 |
| 20 | Indiana | 6,017 | 247,699 | 41.17 |
| 21 | Pennsylvania | 12,556 | 515,588 | 41.06 |
| 22 | Kentucky | 4,766 | 182,956 | 38.39 |
| 23 | Georgia | 12,294 | 460,368 | 37.45 |
| 24 | Idaho | 2,298 | 82,060 | 35.71 |
| 25 | Ohio | 11,386 | 399,825 | 35.12 |
| 26 | New Hampshire | 2,441 | 83,577 | 34.24 |
| 27 | Connecticut | 3,015 | 103,041 | 34.18 |
| 28 | Illinois | 11,947 | 399,439 | 33.43 |
| 29 | Tennessee | 9,215 | 305,944 | 33.20 |
| 30 | Maine | 4,258 | 141,339 | 33.19 |
| 31 | Maryland | 5,865 | 187,667 | 32.00 |
| 32 | South Dakota | 1,282 | 38,628 | 30.13 |
| 33 | Montana | 2,178 | 62,614 | 28.75 |
| 34 | New Mexico | 3,842 | 108,793 | 28.32 |
| 35 | Minnesota | 8,393 | 230,500 | 27.46 |
| 36 | New Jersey | 10,264 | 265,195 | 25.84 |
| 37 | Utah | 3,687 | 90,938 | 24.66 |
| 38 | Nebraska | 2,462 | 59,661 | 24.23 |
| 39 | Rhode Island | 1,810 | 43,147 | 23.84 |
| 40 | Arizona | 14,237 | 332,460 | 23.35 |
| 41 | Alaska | 2,614 | 52,829 | 20.21 |
| 42 | Vermont | 3,295 | 61,745 | 18.74 |
| 43 | Colorado | 14,439 | 209,832 | 14.53 |
| 44 | Nevada | 8,666 | 123,563 | 14.26 |
| 45 | Massachusetts | 19,141 | 244,883 | 12.79 |
| 46 | Hawaii | 6,223 | 78,144 | 12.56 |
| 47 | Washington | 28,036 | 260,296 | 9.28 |
| 48 | New York | 103,200 | 821,965 | 7.96 |
| 49 | District of Columbia | 4,922 | 32,452 | 6.59 |
| 50 | Oregon | 20,142 | 127,460 | 6.33 |
| 51 | California | 181,399 | 1,062,711 | 5.86 |
| Average | United States | 649,535 | 14,001,102 | 21.56 |
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