 How many people fell into homelessness during COVID? Before COVID, there were probably about 20,000 or 30,000 people. Now it's 46,000. I think this is Curtis Sliwa just standing on 3rd Avenue, which when I lived in New York, you can't stand in the middle of the street. Here he is on 3rd Avenue. This is something you'll never see in the middle of the day.