580,000 Americans were homeless in 2020, report says. What about in Idaho?

At least 580,000 Americans were homeless in 2020 — and that was before the pandemic.

More than 2,300 of those people were in Idaho.

On any given night in 2020, 2,315 Idahoans were homeless, according to a report released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Thursday.

Of those people, nearly 1,000 were people in families with children, 90 were unaccompanied youth, 178 were veterans and 269 were chronically homeless, according to the annual Homeless Assessment Report.

The report looks at one-night counts of people who were homeless, both sheltered and unsheltered. The count happened in the last 10 days of January 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“What makes these findings even more devastating is that they are based on data from before COVID-19,” Fudge said in the video. “We know the pandemic has only made the homelessness crisis worse.”

Across the country, homelessness increased significantly from 2019 to 2020, HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge said in a video about the report.

While nationally the number of people who were homeless increased from 2019 to 2020, Idaho was the only state in the country to report no change, according to the report.

Over the past 13 years, however, Idaho has seen significant increases in the percentage of people who were homeless. From 2007 to 2020, Idaho had the nation’s second-highest percent increase in the number of people who were homeless, according to the report.

Idaho reported a 32% increase in those years. Only New York had a larger percent increase (46%) than Idaho, according to the report.

The state also saw a large percent increase in the number of families who were homeless during those years. The number of people who are chronically homeless more than doubled with a 183% increase.

“As a nation, we have a moral responsibility to end homelessness, and we know how to do it,” Fudge said. “It has been shown time and again that helping people exit homelessness quickly through permanent housing without restrictions prevents a return to homelessness.”

This story was originally published March 18, 2021 at 1:39 PM.