Essex County Homeless Population Rises For 4th Straight Year – Belleville, NJ Patch

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — More homeless people live in Essex County than any other part of the state, a New Jersey nonprofit says.

Earlier this week, Monarch Housing Associates released the 2019 “Point In Time” count for New Jersey, a massive, annual effort to see how many people are experiencing homelessness in the state.

Commissioned by the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, the “NJCounts” survey is accomplished with the help of local community, government and volunteer groups. This year’s count took place on one of the coldest days of the year: Jan. 22.

Overall, 8,864 people experiencing homelessness were counted across New Jersey that day, about 5% less than last year’s tally. However, researchers said it wasn’t necessarily a “trend,” pointing out that the slight drop wasn’t seen across the board. Read the full state report and learn about its methodology.

That included Essex County, where the number of homeless residents has steadily risen for four years in a row.

According to researchers, 2,235 homeless people were counted in Essex County on Jan. 22 – about 25% of the entire state’s population. The total dwarfed the next-highest county, Hudson, which had 890 homeless people (10%).

Read the full Essex County “Point in Time” report.

Essex County’s homeless population has been increasing since 2015, when 1,723 people were counted. The county had 1,779 homeless residents counted in 2016, 2,048 in 2017 and 2,229 in 2018. (See below graphic)

Image: Monarch Housing Associates

Some additional highlights from the 2019 count in Essex County include:

  • About 87% of Essex County’s homeless residents live in New Jersey’s largest city, Newark
  • 193 families (66%) were staying in emergency shelters, 94 families (32%) were in transitional housing, and 4 families (1%) were “unsheltered”
  • There was a total of 208 identified homeless adults between 18 and 24 years old (9%), 1,480 adults over age 24 (67%), and 525 children under 18-years-old (24%)
  • 1,264 homeless persons were male (57%), 945 were female (42.6%), eight identified as transgender (0.4%) and one identified as gender non-conforming (0.05%)
  • 74% identified as Black or African-American, 15.3% as Hispanic/Latino, 9.4% as White and 1% as American Indian/ Alaska Native
  • 34% reported having some type of disability. Among disabled persons, 50.7% reported mental health issues.
Image: Monarch Housing Associates

It’s important to keep in mind that the annual count is only a “snapshot” in time and doesn’t include all the homeless people in an area… just the ones counted. The true number of people in need of shelter may be about two or three times larger than the totals from Jan. 22, researchers said.

Still, the stats can be useful when trying to see if homeless relief efforts or working… or if they’re not.

“NJCounts 2019 data is critical to understanding community trends but the data only tells part of the story,” Monarch CEO Taiisa Kelly said. “We need to remember the real people behind these numbers and that housing is a right for all people.”

Image: Monarch Housing Associates

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