California records one of steepest falls in homelessness over 12 months, HUD figures show
California saw a nearly 3% drop in its homeless population last year, according to the latest federal data, placing the state among the five with the largest decreases from 2024. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recorded 181,934 unhoused people in the Golden State in 2025, a reduction that signals at least some success for Governor Gavin Newsom, who has intensified his crackdown on homelessness over the past year.
California’s decrease and regional variations
The headline figure masks a more pronounced decline in unsheltered homelessness. Preliminary data from California communities reporting 2025 numbers indicated a 9% drop in unsheltered homelessness — the largest such decrease in more than 15 years. A majority of the state’s Continuums of Care (CoCs) reported a collective statewide reduction of 4.3% compared with 2024, with 29 out of 30 CoCs publicly releasing their counts.
Some regions fared particularly well. Los Angeles recorded a 10.3% decrease in homelessness, Riverside County a 19% drop, and Contra Costa County a 34.8% fall. Newsom has backed the figures with substantial funding. In December 2025 he announced over $52m in grant funding through federal Community Development Block Grants and 2024 Emergency Solutions Grants, with an additional $14.3m going to 52 projects across the state. More recently, in April 2026, he announced $145.4m in Homelessness, Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) programme funding for eight regions. The HHAP programme has reportedly transitioned more than 100,000 Californians into stable housing. Newsom also expanded the CARE Court programme — focused on behavioural health — to all 58 counties in December 2024, though it has shown mixed results.
Homelessness remains a key issue in this year’s gubernatorial race and in the Los Angeles mayoral election. California and New York still have the largest populations of unsheltered people in the country.
National trends
The national homeless population decreased for the first time since 2016, coming down 3.3% from 2024. On a single night in January 2025, the federally mandated point-in-time count found 745,652 homeless people across the United States. More significant drops were recorded elsewhere: Illinois saw a 44% decrease, Hawaii 41%, Florida 11%, and New York 8%.
State-level stories offer nuance. Chicago’s 60% decrease was largely attributed to a reduction in “newcomer” populations linked to changes in federal immigration policy. Florida’s 11% fall partly reflects House Bill 1365, which took effect in October 2024 and bars public camping without certified sites offering sanitation and services; Jacksonville reported a 49% reduction in its unsheltered homeless population. In New York City, family homelessness in shelters decreased by 6% on average in fiscal year 2025, though single adult entries remained high and street homelessness continued to rise between 2019 and 2025. Hawaii reported a 41% drop in its overall count, though a 2026 report indicated only a 2% decrease across three surveyed islands, with a rise in unsheltered homelessness on Maui.
Longer-term trends paint a bleaker picture. Between 2013 and 2025, overall homelessness increased by 27%, unsheltered homelessness by 36%, and chronic homelessness by 81%. During the same period, taxpayer-funded shelter beds increased by 151% and Continuum of Care spending rose by 111%.
Policy clash over causes and sustainability
The Trump administration attempted to downplay the small one-year national decrease, instead highlighting the 27% rise since 2013. HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in a press release: “The data is clear that the status quo of ‘housing first’ has failed to meaningfully reduce homelessness, resulting in crisis levels of people living on the streets. HUD is restoring its programs to advance recovery and self-sufficiency and to ensure that taxpayer-funded benefits serve American families.” The administration also sought to connect the 2025 drop to its immigration policies, stating that the decrease was “attributable to decreases in Sanctuary Cities”.
Turner has been a vocal critic of the Housing First approach — a bipartisan policy since George W. Bush and codified into law in 2009. He argued that it has produced a “homeless industrial complex” that warehouses people without addressing root causes. In July 2025, Executive Order 14321 moved away from Housing First by focusing on criminalising unsheltered homelessness and emphasising treatment first for mental illness and substance use. Critics say the order misunderstands the root cause of homelessness.
Anti-homelessness advocates cited the 2025 decrease as a “relief” but warned that the administration’s policies may erode the progress. Ann Oliva, chief executive of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said: “So much of the progress reflected in the 2025 PIT Count is due to targeted housing and service resources that were available in 2024 to rehouse people, including the highly successful Emergency Housing Voucher program, and new funds to address rural and unsheltered homelessness.” She pointed to proposed cuts to permanent housing programmes, which the organisation found would “force at least 170,000 formerly homeless people back on the streets”.
The administration has also mandated treatment for recipients of federal housing vouchers and penalised jurisdictions that employed harm-reduction strategies such as safe consumption sites. Dr Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, described abandoning Housing First as “silly, counterintuitive and dangerous”, arguing that the cause of homelessness is a lack of housing. Evaluations show the model is effective in helping chronically homeless people secure and maintain housing, though critics contend that evidence for long-term health and social impact is less consistent.
In April 2026, HUD introduced a proposed rule that would require federally funded shelters to house prospective tenants based on their birth sex alone — a move advocates argue will prevent unhoused transgender people from accessing safe shelter.
