Families compose a growing number of America’s homeless

On Monday, 47 Haitian migrants, including many children, slept on the street outside a transit station in Quincy, Mass.

“A good chunk of that group has not found other shelter options,” said Annie Gonzalez, a volunteer with the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network. The group provides legal referrals for immigrants and connects them with housing and transportation.

Gonzalez said some of the families that piled blankets on the sidewalk had previously stayed in state-funded temporary respite centers or other community shelters but eventually ran out of options. Others were new arrivals. Families wait months for a spot in the state’s nine-month emergency shelter system. “We have a lot of folks hosting in their homes, and we have some congregations offering hospitality,” Gonzalez said. “But it’s not enough to meet the need.”

Massachusetts has seen a sharp increase in the number of families without housing, which mirrors data showing a nationwide upward trend. In some parts of the country, state officials and ministry leaders say recent arrivals to the United States account for a significant portion of the families seeking shelter. But rescue mission leaders in other areas say that, while the rise in immigration plays a part, the spike has more to do with the high cost of living and the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic than an inrush of asylum-seekers.

Massachusetts’ emergency shelter system contracts with about two dozen service providers who own and oversee various locations across the state, with a total capacity for about 7,500 families.

In January 2023, 3,676 families resided in the state’s network of shelters. That number has since nearly doubled to 7,190 families, about half of whom are recent immigrants, according to data obtained from the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

About 2.3 million immigrants, many of them families with young children, entered the United States from 2021 to January 2024. During that time frame, Border Patrol apprehended thousands of families who crossed the border illegally, while other families used a Customs and Border Protection mobile app known as CBP One to make an appointment for an asylum interview at a port of entry. A record number of migrants, roughly 91,000, crossed illegally as families in August 2023. Fewer families have crossed the border this year: in July 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data show Border Patrol encountered 35,518 individuals in family units.

Many families boarded Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s free buses bound for sanctuary cities such as New York, Chicago, or Denver. Data that Abbott’s office shared with The Texas Tribune show the state has transported 119,400 immigrants since Abbott began the bussing program in 2022. Other migrant families made their own way, intending to stay with friends and relatives, or confident that jobs and housing would be easy to come by once they arrived at their destination.

Some of these families qualify for temporary protected status, which allows immigrants of particular nationalities to reside legally in the United States for a limited period of time due to dangerous conditions within their home country. Many immigrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba qualify for the Biden administration’s two-year parole program that permits up to 30,000 immigrants per month to live and work in the United States as long as a U.S. resident guarantees their financial support.

The majority of the families in these temporary categories have begun the process of applying for asylum, a pathway to permanent residency based on whether an immigrant encountered persecution targeting their race, religion, or political affiliation back home. As of May 10, nearly 1.3 million asylum cases were pending in court.

Migrant families compose a significant portion of the homeless families seeking shelter in cities such as Boston and Los Angeles. About 80 percent of homeless individuals in Chicago’s shelter system recently arrived in the United States, according to the city’s 2024 point-in-time count. Overall, the city tracked more than triple the number of homeless people compared to the year before. Migrants accounted for a 147 percent rise in families with children entering New York City’s emergency shelters during the first few months of 2024.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey recently signed a law limiting stays in the state’s emergency shelter network to nine months. According to HUD data, families account for two-thirds of Massachusetts’ homeless population—the highest share in the country. The nine-month limit, along with other state programs established to help migrants find permanent housing, shortened average shelter stays from almost two years to about one year, according to Kevin Connor, a spokesperson for the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

Still, Massachusetts’ shelters are straining to accommodate the influx. The state created several temporary respite centers to initially divert immigrants from the emergency shelter system. Officials limit stays to five days while granting some exceptions on a case-by-case basis. Then, families join a months-long waitlist to enter the longer-term shelter system.

Connor noted that, as migrant families entered the system, Massachusetts’ annual emergency shelter budget ballooned from $300 million to around $1 billion for this fiscal year.

At the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles, interim CEO Jeff Hudson told WORLD the mission has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of mothers and single children unable to afford housing or fleeing abuse. Migrants compose about half of the families coming through their doors, according to Kitty Davis-Walker, the mission’s vice president of public relations, though case managers report the number of migrant families arriving at the mission has fallen over the past several months.

Last year’s U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data classified as homeless 186,084 people who were a part of a family with at least one adult and one child under 18—a nearly 16 percent increase from 2022 and nearly a third of the total population experiencing homelessness. The agency bases its data on federally-mandated point in time counts conducted throughout the country on a single night in January.

The total number of homeless families is likely much higher, since the department doesn’t classify families as homeless if they couch surf with friends or pay for a motel room. And families living out of their cars are not easily visible to volunteers conducting the counts. The Department of Education identified more than 1 million public school students who experienced homelessness during the 2020-21 school year, a number that doesn’t include their parents or any siblings outside of the K-12 system.

“HUD says … if you scrape by enough money to afford a motel room for your family overnight, you’re not homeless,” said Michele Steeb, a homelessness expert and the former director of a women’s shelter in Sacramento, Calif. “They’re not counting about 50-60 percent of families.”

Tom De Vries is the president and CEO of Citygate Network, a community of rescue missions around the country. De Vries said single mothers and their children, not migrant families, are the ones driving the uptick in most places around the country.

“What you’re seeing is rescue missions that are adding women and children’s centers very, very rapidly,” he said.

Single men and women struggling with chronic homelessness often remain on the streets as a result of ongoing addictions or mental health struggles. But for families, a lack of affordable housing is key.

De Vries pointed to the high cost of housing and a breakdown in social support networks. Home prices surged 54 percent between 2019-2024. At the same time, mental illness rates spiked during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, accompanied by rising rates of domestic violence—another common reason why women and their children end up on the streets.

“I don’t think homelessness is a poverty issue,” said Brandan Thomas, Citygate’s director of leadership, learning, and program. “I still firmly hold that belief in most arenas, with the exception of women with children.”

At Western Carolina Rescue Ministries in Asheville, N.C., executive director Micheal Woods said only a few of the mission’s guests are migrants. Most of the families staff serve are single moms and their children struggling to find housing. “We ended up seeing more women fleeing abuse, more women being priced out of housing,” Woods said.

Sheltering adults and their children together pose unique challenges for rescue missions. That’s especially true when single dads show up with their children or mothers have sons older than 12. For safety reasons, Woods can’t house men and adolescent boys with other families.

In the group’s women’s shelter, the mission has a space for moms and children to stay together, and two licensed social workers are on hand to work with families.

Woods also directs the Cleveland County Rescue Mission, where he said they often run out of space for families: “We’re having to turn away women and children, because we don’t have the staffing to keep it safe.”

Back in Massachusetts, Connor told WORLD that his office works with the Department of Homeland Security to expedite work authorization for asylum-seekers since it’s difficult to “exit a family out of shelter if they do not have a way to support themselves or have financial independence,” he said. “This is a family shelter system that was not necessarily designed to track and trace federal immigration statutes,” he added.

In June, Gov. Healey sent a delegation to the U.S.-Mexico border with a message to asylum-seekers: Massachusetts’ shelters are full.

Connor said the situation is unlikely to change unless Congress acts on immigration reform. “Some level of change on the federal level is what’s ultimately going to solve the broader problem of immigrants needing continued level of services,” he said. “We’ve tried our absolute best with the resources that we have.”