WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of homeless people in the U.S. declined for a third straight year, helped by sharp dropoffs in veteran and chronic homelessness, according to a government survey released Thursday.

More than 610,000 people were homeless at the time of the count, on a single night in the last week of January. That was down from 633,782, or a 4 percent drop from the previous year, according to the survey by the Housing and Urban Development Department. The study counted people in 3,000 cities and counties.