New York City spent roughly $81,000 per person on homeless services last year — amounting to a whopping $368 million in total bills, a shocking new state report found.
Spending on the city’s Department of Homeless Services’ “Street Homeless Solutions” division more than tripled over the last six years, from $102 million in 2019 — or about $28,000 per “unsheltered homeless person,” according to the report from the state comptroller’s office.
The cost per person was roughly equivalent to the city’s median household income as of the 2024 US Census — $81,228 annually.
Unsheltered homeless people constitute those living regularly on the streets, compared to those who are in some kind of affordable housing or long-term shelter system.
The Big Apple’s unsheltered homeless population increased by 26% over the same timeframe, the report released by Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli found.
About 3,588 unsheltered homeless people were reported in the 2019 fiscal year, while 4,505 were reported in the fiscal year 2025.
Both the COVID pandemic and the migrant crisis contributed to the spike in street homelessness — but it remains unclear why spending surged at a higher rate than the population increase.
“It’s a clarion call to make sure every dollar counts,” former City Comptroller Scott Stringer told The Post on Monday.
“We should have better outcomes when the city spends this amount of money on homeless services. You must understand where the money is going,” he said.
The cost per person is more than the city Department of Education spends per public school student, about $42,000.
One possible cause is an increase in “low-barrier beds” and “drop-in centers” that have been rolled out in higher numbers by the city DHS in recent years, consisting of short-term shelters and other resources for people to use as they please.
Those resources allow people living on the streets to come and go as they desire, and provide the likes of showers, meals and bunkrooms or chairs for them to sleep in.
But the exact breakdown of what the DHS has been spending on those resources is unclear, as they are not differentiated in financial reports, the comptroller found.
“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,” DiNapoli said in the report.
“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 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 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,” DiNapoli said in the report.
But, he noted, the city’s efforts at serving those living on the streets “has not reduced the overall unsheltered population, as demand has continued to grow, fueled by larger migration patterns that were not under the City’s control.”
“While the City collects a vast amount of data on those served and the services provided, it can use this data more effectively to explain whether these programs are successful at getting people into shelter and eventually permanent housing,” the report said.
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 said that his homeless sweeps would have “better outcomes” than those conducted under his predecessor Adams, and would be led by DHS workers.
Stringer called the new report on homeless spending presents a “challenge for the new Mamdani administration.”
“The shelter system is moving sideways,” Stringer said, recalling his days auditing the city’s homeless system under Mayor Bill de Blasio when shelter conditions were regularly found to be dangerous and decrepit.
“My sense is things have gotten worse, not better,” Stringer said. “It’s why people sleep on the streets.”
Some advocates suggested the city could utilize unused public housing to get people off the streets on a more permanent basis – and free up dollars otherwise being used to cover expensive short-term shelters.
“Just letting people cycle between streets, shelters, hospitals and jails is not only expensive, but inhumane,” said David Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless.
“You’d see a decrease in the number of people sleeping on the streets and the number of people in shelters if the City could quickly fix and fill all the vacant supportive housing units and public housing units and designate those for the people most in need of them,” he said.
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