Essex County Had Most Homeless In New Jersey For 2017, Study Says

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — There’s good news and bad news about homelessness in New Jersey and Essex County.

The good news, according to the 2017 NJ Counts Point-In-Time homeless study, is that statewide, the number of homeless New Jersey residents dropped 4.6 percent.

The bad news is that Essex County bucked the trend for another consecutive year, ranking as the county with the most homeless residents in the state.

Essex County has a whopping 24 percent of the state’s homeless population, according to a report from Monarch Housing Associates, which spearheaded an annual, one-day count of the state's homeless population in January.

With a total of 2,048 homeless people counted, Essex County’s total dwarfs the tally from the second-highest county, Hudson, which had 822 homeless residents, according to the study. This is the third-straight year that Essex County has topped the state in homeless residents. See the complete totals for Essex County in 2017 here.

Here are some other eye-opening statistics from the study:

• On the night of January 24, 2017, a total of 2,048 persons, in 1,507 households, experienced homelessness in Essex County. This represents an increase of 269 persons (15.1%) and 158 households (11.7%) from 2016.
• Of the 1,507 homeless households counted in Essex County in 2017, about 273 (18.1%) were families with at least one child under the age of 18 and one adult. These families included 795 persons, 465 children under age 18, and 330 adults.
• The age range most represented were adults between 45 and 54 (379 persons, 18.5%).
• About 59.6% (1,220 persons) of homeless persons were male, 39.8% (816) were female, and 8 (0.4%) were transgender.
• About 64.1% of persons identified their race as Black or African-American. The next largest subgroup self-identified as White (19.1%), followed by those identifying as American Indian/Native American (1.3%). About 17.7% of respondents identified themselves as Hispanic.
• About 32.7% (669 persons) of homeless persons reported having some type of disability.
• About 89 homeless households (5.9%) identified as victims of domestic violence.
• About 52 homeless veteran households were counted on the night of the count, matching the number of veterans counted in 2016.

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