Are most people experiencing homelessness men?

Both countries count homelessness on a single night. Volunteers and outreach workers count people in shelters and people they find sleeping outside. These Point-in-Time counts are designed to measure visible homelessness, not everyone without a stable home.

In the United States, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) counted 771,480 people on a night in January 2024. Of these, 59.6% identified as men or boys and 39.2% as women or girls. Among people sleeping unsheltered, 67.4% were men and boys. Among people in families with children, the pattern reversed: 57.5% were women and girls.

In Canada, 74 communities counted 59,824 people, mostly on a night in late 2024. The national count totals are not broken down by gender. A survey run alongside the count found that 62% of respondents identified as men, 35% as women and 3% as gender-diverse.

People staying temporarily with friends or family, often called hidden homelessness, are mostly not in the counts. HUD’s count does not include them at all. Canada’s survey reached some people in hidden homelessness, but only those connected to services on the night.

Among the people Canada’s survey did reach, women were a larger share in the places the counts see least: 42% of those in hidden homelessness and 55% of those in hotels and motels, compared with 31% of those sleeping outside.

A different kind of survey reaches people the counts miss. Statistics Canada’s 2018 Canadian Housing Survey asked people now responsible for their household’s housing whether they had ever been homeless. 15.0% of women and 14.2% of men said they had experienced hidden homelessness at some point, and 2.3% of women and 2.6% of men unsheltered homelessness. Statistics Canada reports that neither difference is statistically significant.

So the share of men in the counts accurately describes who is homeless and visible on a given night, especially outdoors. It does not describe everyone who loses their housing. Over a lifetime, the survey finds women and men about equally likely to have been homeless.

In Canada’s survey, the most common reason for losing housing, for everyone, was not having enough income for housing (36%). Women were more than four times as likely as men to say they lost their housing because of abuse by a spouse or partner (16% compared with 3%).

Women were also much more likely to have children or dependents with them (17%, compared with 3% of men). In both countries, families with children are far more likely to be in shelters or other accommodation than outside.

Supported: men are about six in ten of the people counted as homeless in both countries, about two in three of those sleeping outside, and close to seven in ten single adults in the US count.

Not established: that men are the majority of everyone experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. The counts are built to find people in shelters and outdoors on one night. Asked about their whole lives, Canadian women and men now in housing were about equally likely to have been homeless.

Also not supported: that homelessness is mainly a women’s issue, or mainly a men’s issue. The figures show different patterns of homelessness, not a single answer.

The US gender figures cover everyone in the count. The Canadian figures come from a voluntary survey of some of the people counted, which is not statistically representative of everyone counted that night. Canada’s count also left out communities in Quebec in 2024. The direction is the same in both, but the shares should not be compared directly.

HUD published its 2025 count in May 2026, but that report does not include a breakdown by gender. We use 2024, the most recent year with one.

A count on one night over-represents people who are homeless for a long time and under-represents people who are homeless briefly. The split between women and men could differ over a full year.

The Canadian Housing Survey only covers people who are now housed and make their household’s housing decisions. It leaves out people who are homeless now, people who live in someone else’s household, and people who died without regaining housing. It counts any episode, however brief, so it does not show how long or how often people were homeless.