Who we call homeless

Homelessness takes many forms, and the word flattens them. In January 2025, about 745,000 people were counted as homeless in HUD's yearly one-night count. It counts those in a shelter or a place not meant for sleeping, like a car or a tent. It does not count two large groups without a home of their own: families doubled up with relatives, and people paying by the week at a motel. The real number is far higher. A second federal count reaches the people HUD's does not. It answers a different question, though. Public schools identified about 1.55 million students without stable housing across the whole 2023 to 2024 school year. About three in four were doubled up, exactly the group HUD's one-night count leaves out. One is a single night, all ages, narrowly defined; the other is a full year, students only, defined more broadly. Put side by side they do not tell you the size of the gap. What they do show is that a large population without a home of their own sits outside what the headline number was built to measure.

Much of homelessness is also brief. A job ends, a car breaks down, a lease is not renewed, and someone loses their home for weeks or months. That kind of homelessness looks nothing like the picture the word brings to mind.

A national study out of the University of Chicago linked the records of people counted as homeless to federal earnings data. In the year they were counted, 52.8 percent of the people in shelters had formal, tax-reported earnings. That is more than half. Among those counted unsheltered, 40.4 percent did. (The data is from 2010 and counts only income reported to the IRS, so it misses cash work. The percentages mean these people earned something that year, not every month.)

But the work is thin. Among sheltered people who worked, the average was about $14,200 in 2018 dollars. The work came in stretches: roughly 30 weeks of the year, at something near full-time hours in the weeks they worked. Those last figures come from survey answers people gave about themselves, over a later stretch of years, not from the tax records behind the 52.8 percent. The study's authors caution that self-reported work often does not match the earnings records. That makes the shape of the work the finding here, not the exact numbers. The work rule requires 80 hours a month, and it is applied one month at a time. So someone working steadily for part of the year clears it in those months and falls short in the empty ones. The work is real. It is not enough to pay for a home, and it does not line up with a monthly rule.

A smaller group is counted differently again. HUD's chronic homelessness means having a disability and living in an emergency shelter, a place not meant for people to live, or a safe haven, which is a small residence for people with severe mental illness. The person must have been homeless that way for at least 12 months, in one stretch or in four or more stretches in the last three years. The disability can be physical, mental, or emotional, including addiction, if it is long-lasting, makes it hard to live independently, and could be improved by more suitable housing. A developmental disability or HIV also counts. HUD counted about 150,000, most living outside. These are not separate populations from the people just described. Someone in this group may have earnings; someone with no earnings this year may not be in it. For many, though, steady work is not on the table, because the same things that keep them on the street keep them out of a job. SNAP has never applied its work rule to a person found unfit to work, and the 2025 law kept that exemption. But being chronically homeless is not an automatic pass. The person has to be screened, and a caseworker has to find them exempt. Whether that happens depends on what North Carolina tells its caseworkers, and how a caseworker reads it.

The rule in question is SNAP's three-month time limit for adults it labels able-bodied and without dependents, ages 18 through 64. SNAP has other work rules that reach a different set of people; this is the one the 2025 change altered for homeless adults. Behind the label "without dependents" is one exemption worth knowing, and one trap inside it. If you are in a SNAP household with a child under 14, the rule does not apply to you. You do not have to be the child's parent, you do not have to be responsible for them, and the child does not have to be eligible for benefits. But it has to be the same SNAP household. That usually means the people you buy and prepare food with rather than everyone under the same roof. Spouses and most children under 22 living with a parent are the exception: they count as one household whether they share food or not. The same goes for a child under 18 who lives with and depends on someone other than a parent, such as a grandparent. Foster children are not part of that rule. Someone sleeping on a friend's couch and buying their own groceries is a household of one, and the friend's children do not give them this exemption.

Set against the counts above, the under-14 exemption cuts less cleanly than it first looks. A parent doubled up with relatives and sharing food with them is likely exempt. The other adult on the same couch, buying their own groceries, is not. Neither is a doubled-up parent whose children are 14 or older. Either one can still be exempt for another reason. One is a separate exemption for someone responsible for the care of a child under 6, or of a person of any age who needs help caring for themselves. North Carolina's guidance says the person being cared for does not have to live with the caregiver or be in the same SNAP household. So the rule does reach into the doubled-up population, just unevenly. None of the public counts can tell us how many people land on each side of that line. One word covers all of them; the rule sorts them by arrangements no count records.

If the rule covers you and you are not exempt, you have to spend 80 hours a month in paid or unpaid work, in an approved work program, or volunteering. Any combination of these counts. Three months without the hours and your benefit ends. The three months do not have to be back to back. A month counts toward the three only if you got a full month of benefits.

A missed month does not count automatically, either. If something outside your control got in the way, that can be good cause, and the month is not supposed to count against you. Good cause is for someone who would have met the hours but missed some. The absence also has to be temporary. North Carolina's manual describes good cause as circumstances beyond your control. The manual gives examples rather than a closed list: your own illness, an illness in the household that affects your ability to work, a household emergency, or no transportation. NCDHHS also names child care falling through. Tell the caseworker as soon as it happens rather than after the fact, and be ready to explain what happened. Someone who misses hours is supposed to get the benefit of the doubt.

North Carolina counts the months that do stick inside a fixed three-year window. The current one runs from January 1, 2025 through December 31, 2027. Someone who used three months in 2025 is locked out until the next window opens on January 1, 2028, unless they meet the hours or qualify for an exemption first. Getting back on takes 80 hours in any 30-day period, from paid or unpaid work, an approved work program, or a combination of the two. The 30 days do not have to line up with a calendar month. Taking part in a workfare program and doing what it requires over a 30-day period would also count, but no North Carolina county runs one. Becoming exempt does it too, and so does the three-year window running out. And once someone is back on, they can get three more months in a row even if they stop meeting the hours again. Those are sometimes called bonus months, and they are available once per three-year window. They start on the date you tell the agency you are no longer meeting the hours. If you had been in a work or workfare program, they start instead when the agency tells you.

Two things are firm, and no caseworker can waive them. You cannot be required to have a permanent home or a fixed mailing address to get food help. And when you claim an exemption, your own word must be accepted unless there is a specific, case-by-case reason to question it. A county cannot decide in advance that everyone in your situation has to prove it; federal rule forbids exactly that. Your word alone is not always enough. Receiving disability benefits has to be verified another way. So does being unfit to work, when that is not obvious to the caseworker. The two firm rules are the floor for every state. Being believed is not the same as being found exempt, though. The worker still decides whether what you describe meets the standard.

The "obviously unfit" finding, and the option to take a short statement from someone other than a doctor, are in the federal rules every state works from. What North Carolina added is the part that matters most here. The state told its caseworkers that chronic homelessness itself can be the thing that makes a person obviously unfit, when their housing situation is what keeps them from working 20 hours a week. That is the worker's judgment. The manual does not use the term chronic homelessness the way HUD does. HUD's chronic homelessness requires a disability and at least 12 months of homelessness. North Carolina's manual means something else: lacking a fixed and regular place to sleep at night. Its examples include shelters, outdoor and makeshift spots, vehicles, RVs without working utilities or sewer or septic hookups, and other places not built or ordinarily used for sleeping. It also counts places without access to a toilet, or where a person cannot keep clean or sleep in a stable way. So the exemption reaches the street, the shelter, and the car most clearly. A couch in someone else's home or a paid motel room is a harder case under that wording. Those are exactly the situations of the two large groups the opening described.

When someone is obviously unfit for work, no doctor's note is required. When the barrier is not obvious, a short statement is enough, but it has to come from someone on the state's list. That list is wider than a doctor's office. Federal rules accept a physician, a physician's assistant, a nurse, a nurse practitioner, a licensed or certified psychologist, a social worker, or a staff member a doctor's office authorizes to give the statement. North Carolina added physical and occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, licensed counselors and therapists, and a Certified Addiction and Drug Counselor. The state also added the two a person without a home is most likely to already know: a Certified Substance Abuse Counselor and a Certified Community Health Worker. Being on the list is what matters. A shelter staffer or outreach worker who is not on it cannot write the statement, so ask about that first. The statement itself is easy. It can be given by phone, and it needs no letterhead and no particular wording. It only has to identify who is writing it and say the person cannot work 20 hours a week, or describe the condition that stops them. And no month can be counted against anyone until the county has screened them for every exemption.

Volunteering toward the 80 hours can be done at a nonprofit, a church or other religious group, a community organization, or a government agency. Community service ordered by a court counts too. For self-employment or contract work, the county is told to accept the person's own statement of hours instead of a pay stub, because that kind of work does not produce one. That applies to the hours. Income and the rest of eligibility are still checked the usual way, so this is not a matter of saying a number and being done. Read together, the rules describe more than one path for a person without an address. But a category in a manual is not the same as a volunteer placement that will take you and vouch for your hours. The state's own manual notes that its work program is optional for counties.

Parts of the rules are firm, and parts turn on a caseworker's judgment. The no-address rule and the required screening are requirements a county must follow. So is taking you at your word when you claim an exemption, except where proof is required. The part left to judgment is smaller, but the hardest cases turn on it. Is the homelessness enough to make someone "obviously unfit"? Does a housing situation really prevent 20 hours of work? Those are calls a worker makes. The same discretion can protect one person and exclude another, depending on who is deciding and how much time they have.

Some of the counties making these calls are stretched thin. North Carolina's own auditor looked at 2021 through 2024. From 2022 through 2024, about 9 percent of applications and recertifications missed the federal deadline. In a handful of the worst counties, a larger share was late. That report is about how fast paperwork moves. It does not cover who gets an exemption, and it does not show anyone being wrongly denied. It is a reason to pay attention.

So does the fine print hold up once a real case reaches a caseworker? We cannot yet say, and neither can anyone working only from what is public. When a SNAP case closes in North Carolina, the county records a reason code. It shows, roughly, whether the household earned too much or missed a required step like an interview or a form. A statewide count of how often cases are closed because of a missed step would at least show how large a role paperwork plays. But no public source we searched breaks it out. Even that count would not say which closures involved a homeless person or a mishandled exemption. The next step for this reporting is to request the deidentified data from the agencies that hold it.

Economists who studied an earlier round of SNAP work requirements found the requirements pushed people off the program without moving them into work. The economists also found that homeless adults were among those most likely to be screened out. Another study, in a single state, found that dropping a work requirement reduced the denials that come from procedure rather than from income. Neither study is about North Carolina, and neither tested the more forgiving rules the state just wrote. So they do not predict what happens here. What they show is the risk worth watching: a work requirement can screen out homeless adults, and a share of the people it screens out are turned away over paperwork rather than over money.

If you are trying to keep your SNAP, get free help before you take no for an answer. Pisgah Legal Services helps with SNAP denials, terminations, and appeals at no cost. The Food Helpline at MANNA FoodBank helps you apply for SNAP and keep it. Your county Department of Social Services runs your case.

If you are cut off, two dates on the letter matter. You have 90 calendar days to ask for a hearing. There is also a shorter window, the 10 working days of advance notice. Asking inside it can keep your benefits coming at the old amount while you wait. That second option does not apply to every case. It is also not free: if you lose, you have to pay back what you received in the meantime. So keep the letter, note both dates, and call Pisgah Legal before you decide which one you are working toward. This is a page about what the rule says, not a substitute for someone who can look at your notice.

For the wider toll across the state, see who loses SNAP now. For who absorbs the added cost of all this verification, see who pays for SNAP now. For what the work does and does not pay for, see that wouldn't be me. For what an Asheville day center does for someone with no mailbox, see what the belt measures.