He is also the subject of an award-winning film. In New York, which feels increasingly like a city with an ever-more brutal divide between the haves and the have-nots, homelessness is rising. In January of 2014, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, there were 67,810 homeless people in the city (based on a “point-in-time” survey taken all over the country on a single night in January); there had been 64,060 the year before—and that’s nearly 10,000 more than were recorded in 2010.