The number of people with nowhere to call home decreased both in California and nationwide last year, according to a long-awaited federal report.
The data, showing the first decrease in years, provided fuel for activists challenging the Trump administration鈥檚 narrative that current homelessness policies are failing and need to be overhauled.
There were 181,934 homeless Californians counted last year 鈥� a 2.8% decrease from 2024, according to the . Overall, the country saw a 3.3% drop in homelessness, marking the first decrease since 2016. Nationwide, an estimated 745,652 people are homeless.
Those numbers come from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which released its annual homelessness report to Congress on Friday after an unexplained . As the country鈥檚 main barometer for how efforts to combat homelessness are working, the report plays an important role in allocating funding and shaping policies 鈥� and is a major political tool.
The Trump administration used the report to promote its policies, including its crackdown on immigration and efforts to direct funding away from permanent housing. Meanwhile, the National Homelessness Law Center was quick to point out that the decrease in homelessness happened while former President Joe Biden was still in office.
鈥淗omelessness is down because President Biden funded things that we know work, like housing and support,鈥� law center spokesperson Jesse Rabinowitz said in a news release. 鈥淪adly, the Trump administration is doing everything they can to backtrack on this progress.鈥�
The federal government downplayed the small one-year decrease in homelessness, instead focusing on the fact that homelessness has increased 27% nationwide since 2013. That鈥檚 when the country started following a practice called 鈥渉ousing first,鈥� which moves people into housing right away instead of requiring them first to get sober or meet other conditions.
鈥淭he data is clear that the status quo of 鈥榟ousing first鈥� has failed to meaningfully reduce homelessness, resulting in crisis levels of people living on the streets,鈥� said HUD Secretary Scott Turner. 鈥淗UD is restoring its programs to advance recovery and self-sufficiency and to ensure that taxpayer-funded benefits serve American families.鈥�
The Trump administration wants to end housing first and instead prioritize housing that requires people to stay sober. The administration also has tried to divert homelessness funds away from permanent housing and into temporary shelters. California is one of 19 states the Trump administration over that change.
The federal administration tied the 2025 drop in homelessness to immigration, saying in a that it was 鈥渁ttributable to decreases in sanctuary cities.鈥� The full report never mentions sanctuary cities, but it says some communities in New York and Illinois attributed their decreases in homelessness 鈥渋n part鈥� to changes in federal immigration policy.
Where homelessness declined
California was among the five states that reported the largest decreases in homelessness last year, though there were more significant drops in Illinois (44%), Hawaii (41%), Florida (11%), and New York (8%).
In California, 17 communities reported decreases in the number of people who were 鈥渃hronically homeless,鈥� meaning they have a disability and have been homeless for a year or longer. Los Angeles County reported 2,394 fewer such people. Officials from communities that saw those declines attributed the trend to opening new housing, placing people in housing more quickly, using a coordinated system to match people with available units and increasing street outreach, according to the report.
The data comes from the federally mandated homeless , which tallies people sleeping in shelters and outside on a given day in January. Volunteers count people they see sleeping on the street, in cars or in other places not meant for habitation. The effort is generally viewed as an undercount, as it鈥檚 easy for volunteers to miss people tucked away in hard-to-reach areas.
The federal government requires each community to count the people sleeping on its streets every two years. Counts are conducted by 鈥渃ontinuums of care,鈥� which include a county (or multiple counties), cities and local service providers. In California, 14 of the state鈥檚 44 continuums of care did not count last year. HUD used 2024 data for communities in which no 2025 data was available.
Each community is required to submit its point-in-time count data to HUD, which reviews, verifies and analyzes the data before publishing a report. That report typically comes out in December of the year of the count.
How Trump changed point-in-time report
When the federal report finally came out Friday, the Trump administration put its stamp on it in several ways, including by scrubbing all references to gender. The prior report from 2024 broke out homelessness by gender (39% of people counted were women and 60% were men), and included categories such as transgender, gender questioning and non-binary. The 2025 data includes no such breakdown.
And while the previous report referred to 鈥減eople experiencing homelessness,鈥� the new report instead referred to 鈥渉omeless persons.鈥�
While the drop in nationwide homelessness last year is a 鈥渞elief,鈥� there is trouble on the horizon, according to Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
鈥淪o much of the progress reflected in the 2025 (point-in-time) count is due to targeted housing and service resources that were available in 2024 to rehouse people,鈥� she said in a news release, 鈥渋ncluding the highly successful Emergency Housing Voucher program, and new funds to address rural and unsheltered homelessness. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has largely deprioritized these tools and worked to dismantle the very systems that drove these reductions.鈥�
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