NYC Allocates $81K per Individual on Homeless Support: Comptroller’s Report Reveals

Last year, New York City allocated approximately $81,000 per individual for homeless services, culminating in an astounding $368 million expenditure, as unveiled by a recent state report.

According to findings from the state comptroller’s office, the budget for the city’s Department of Homeless Services’ Street Homeless Solutions division has seen more than a threefold increase over the past six years, rising from $102 million in 2019.

In that year, expenditures per “unsheltered homeless person” were around $28,000, as detailed in the report released on Wednesday.

Unsheltered homeless individuals are those who routinely reside on the streets, as opposed to those accommodated in affordable housing or within a long-term shelter system.

During this period, the population of unsheltered homeless in New York City swelled by 26%, the report highlighted.

The fiscal year 2019 recorded approximately 3,588 unsheltered homeless individuals, a number that rose to 4,505 by the fiscal year 2025.

“The number of people living on the street in New York City has continued to grow, even as the city has been effective at providing shelter for the majority of the homeless population,” State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said in the report.

“The escalation in spending driven by the increase in the unsheltered population, however, merits greater focus on where resources are going and what services are working,” he said.

“Street homelessness is a chronic problem that requires collaborative efforts to help bring vulnerable New Yorkers into shelter and out of the cold.”

Spending on services for unsheltered homeless people is expected to continue increasing to about $456 million by the 2026 fiscal year, the comptroller’s office found.

The increase in costs over the last six years has largely come from “low-barrier beds,” which consist of easily accessible overnight shelters intended to appeal to people wary of the system.

The city’s overall homeless population totals around 140,000 people, and has grown nearly 78% since 2019, according to the comptroller’s office.

The city has been able to provide some kind of shelter to about 97%, which DiNapoli’s office noted was “a notable achievement.”

The spending increase happened before Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office on Jan. 1, but he has already begun spending big on the city’s homeless.

Last week, his administration inked a three-year $1.86 billion contract with city hotels to serve as homeless housing for a system similar to the one former Mayor Eric Adams employed to get migrants beds as they flowed into the Big Apple.

And while the new mayor initially vowed to eliminate homeless encampment sweeps and let people stay on the streets if they wanted to, in February, he made an about-face and brought the measures back after at least 15 New Yorkers died outside from the brutal cold.

Mamdani vowed that his homeless sweeps would have “better outcomes” than those conducted under his predecessor Adams, and would be led by city DHS workers.