The latest count points to a modest reversal in a long-running crisis: more than 138,000 New York City public school students experienced homelessness during the last school year, down 10 percent from the record 154,000 reported the year before. But the total remains above 100,000 for an 11th consecutive year, and represents about one in eight children in the system.
Advocates for Children of New York released the annual count Tuesday, using New York State Education Department records, The New York Times reported. The count covers students meeting the federal education-law definition of homelessness, including those in shelters, doubled up with other families, staying in hotels, or without shelter. In the latest figures, 37 percent lived in shelters and 58 percent were doubled up with relatives or friends because of economic hardship, according to Chalkbeat.
How the count and housing mix are measured
The preceding year’s figures offer a comparison of where students stayed: in 2024–25, 42 percent of students identified as homeless spent time in city shelters, 53 percent were doubled up, and 5 percent were in other temporary housing situations, according to Advocates for Children of New York. The organization says that year’s data include DOE-managed public schools and charter schools, and that its homelessness rates use cumulative enrollment data. The figures provided here do not establish whether homelessness fell faster than overall enrollment.
The figures also describe disruptions that can affect schooling, work and access to care.
Jennifer Pringle is director of Advocates for Children’s Learners in Temporary Housing Project.
Absenteeism and Lost Classroom Time
Attendance data show how housing instability can coincide with lost classroom time. Nearly half of students in temporary housing—and 63 percent of those in shelters—were chronically absent during the 2024–25 school year. Together, their absences amounted to 1.1 million missed instructional days across the city, according to Advocates for Children of New York.
The same report documented school transfers and academic outcomes. During 2024–25, one in five students in shelters changed schools at least once, more than four times the rate for students with stable housing. In 2025, 33 percent of homeless students scored proficient on the grades 3–8 English Language Arts exam, compared with 60 percent of their permanently housed peers.
Graduation outcomes show a similar gap. About 59 percent of students living in shelters graduated high school on time, compared with the citywide rate of 81 percent, and 14 percent dropped out entirely, a rate roughly triple that of students with stable housing, per Chalkbeat's report on the new figures.
Boroughs See Uneven Declines
The decline reached all five boroughs, with Manhattan seeing the largest decrease: an 18 percent drop in its overall student-homelessness rate.
The citywide decrease did not erase sharp differences among neighborhoods. Nearly one in six Bronx students experienced homelessness during the 2025–26 school year, the highest borough rate; Manhattan’s rate was about one in seven, while Staten Island’s was roughly one in 20, according to Chalkbeat. In Brooklyn’s Brownsville, more than one in eight students lived in shelters—about three times the citywide average. Citywide, the number of students in shelters is still 41 percent higher than it was a decade ago.
Transportation Remains a Persistent Obstacle
Transportation troubles echo well beyond Cleo B.'s case. Advocates for Children found that 1,755 students in temporary housing were still waiting for bus service at the end of the last school year, and 37 percent of families were initially placed in shelters located in a different borough from their children's school. Citywide, around 66,000 school bus riders are students with disabilities or students living in temporary housing, including those in shelters, according to City Limits, which reported 4,476 bus no-shows and 8,068 delays or breakdowns during the opening weeks of the 2025–26 school year.
Advocates and parents called for changes to the school-bus system, whose contracts are 46 years old.
City Officials Point to Policy Shifts
Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned with a promise to prioritize support programs for homeless students and has invested in the Every Child and Family Is Known initiative, though that effort was expanded more modestly than the numbers Mamdani had promised during his campaign. New York City also closed emergency housing that had been opened during the migrant crisis under former Mayor Eric Adams.
School officials said they have continued to expand support teams, coordinate between schools and shelters, and use federal and city funds for direct services, while also adjusting policies to eliminate a requirement that children attend all housing meetings. Officials have also established community schools in districts with high concentrations of shelters. Kamar Samuels said city agencies and advocacy groups are working together to ensure educational stability for students in temporary housing, but added that the work is far from over.
Maria Odom said the decline in student homelessness was no cause for celebration, noting that the prior year marked the eleventh consecutive year in which more than 100,000 city students lacked permanent housing. Pringle struck a similar note, saying homeless students need more support to succeed in school until every child has a permanent home.
