Number of Homeless People Living on New York City Streets Hits a Record

The Latest:

The number of people living in the streets and subways of New York City has ticked up slightly to record levels, according to results of an annual one-night field survey that the city released on Thursday.

The survey, conducted in January, found an estimated 4,140 people living unsheltered, up 2.4 percent from last year’s 4,042 and the most since 2005, when the city began conducting the surveys.

An annual survey found 4,140 people living in streets, subways and parks on a day in January.Credit…Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Cause: Migrants are not the reason, the city says.

The increase comes as the city has struggled to provide shelter to up to 70,000 migrants each night.

But the city’s social services commissioner, Molly Wasow Park, said in an interview on Thursday that the city sees no evidence of “any systemic increase in the number of unsheltered people who are asylum seekers.”

The city has been tracking unsheltered homelessness — people living on the streets, the subways or in parks — near service hubs for the migrants, like around the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, and frequently checks in with outreach teams.