As housing costs rise, so does California homelessness, report shows

Homelessness has shot up in California and elsewhere on the West Coast over the past two years, a federal report said Wednesday, as rising rents and other housing pressures forced more people from the margins onto the street.

California’s homeless population went up 14 percent, to 134,278 — the most by far of any state, and representing 31 percent of all the homeless people in the U.S., according to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. New York had the second-largest homeless population, at 89,503, a 4 percent increase.