HOPE COUNT: The city launched the annual count of unsheltered New Yorkers living on the streets and subways on Tuesday night. Known as Homeless Outreach Population Estimate, or HOPE, the count uses a small army of volunteers to tally people sleeping outside on one of the coldest nights of the year and then extrapolate that to a citywide estimate. The once-a-year count gives the city a sense of the hardest-to-reach population. The count estimated 4,140 people were unsheltered in 2024, up slightly from the year before and the highest the number has been in almost two decades.
FRESH AIR: Gov. Kathy Hochul touted the effects of health recreation this week, announcing record attendance at New York state parks last year. Park attendance hit 88.3 million in 2023, the highest on record, surpassing the previous year’s attendance by 4 million people. The governor took partial credit, saying the state’s free public pool program in the summer and state parks spending helped drive people to the outdoors. Also at play was a historic solar eclipse last April which brought a record number of tourists travelling in the state. Hochul’s executive budget proposal for the next fiscal year includes $200 million for state parks.
