The Bay Space’s homeless inhabitants grew 6% to an estimated 38,891 folks in 2024, in keeping with new federal knowledge, extending a decade-long surge fueled by the housing affordability disaster, and drug and psychological well being challenges amongst these residing on the area’s streets.
In California, homelessness rose 3% to greater than 187,000, whereas the U.S. homeless inhabitants spiked 18% to greater than 770,000 from 2023 to 2024. All three totals are file highs.
Federal officers attributed the steep nationwide enhance largely to a wave of migration on the southern border. Most of the states that noticed the most important jumps in homelessness, together with New York, Illinois and Massachusetts, additionally noticed the biggest current influxes of lots of of hundreds of migrants looking for asylum. In contrast to in California, many massive cities in these chilly climate states are legally required to offer beds for folks needing shelter, and a few native officers and migration specialists have urged that has made them a pretty vacation spot for migrants.
Final yr, homelessness elevated by 116% in Illinois, 53% in New York and Massachusetts, however simply 2% within the giant Solar Belt states of Texas and Florida.
Whereas the migrant disaster might have had much less of an impression within the Bay Space, specialists and advocates say homelessness will persist right here and throughout the nation till communities can higher handle their drug and psychological well being challenges and, importantly, add extra reasonably priced houses whereas easing the burden of rising housing prices on low-income residents.
“Our leaders must immediately expand the resources to rehouse people without homes and assist the rapidly growing number of people who cannot afford skyrocketing rents,” mentioned Ann Oliva, chief govt of the Nationwide Alliance to Finish Homelessness, in an announcement.
Most counties nationwide counted their homeless populations in January 2024 — which means the estimates are now not updated — earlier than sending the outcomes to the federal authorities. Within the Bay Space, homelessness elevated by 20% in Contra Costa County, 15% in San Mateo County, and 10% in San Francisco, whereas declining by 3% in Alameda County, in keeping with federal knowledge.
In Santa Clara County, homelessness grew by 5% to 10,394, the biggest complete of the 9 Bay Space counties. Nevertheless, in 2023, the final yr the county took a full homeless census, native officers reported a 1% decline. For years {that a} county doesn’t do a rely, the federal authorities’s estimate relies on the newest tally and the variety of folks in shelters.
Throughout the Bay Space, as with the state as an entire, about two-thirds of homeless residents reside on the road, whereas the remainder keep in shelters.
Even because the area averted an explosion in homelessness final yr, the estimates, whereas broadly thought-about an undercount, present the Bay Space’s homeless inhabitants has skyrocketed by 46% over the previous decade.
The surge coincided with a greater than 20% enhance within the area’s median lease, which now tops $3,000 a month, in keeping with Zillow knowledge.
Throughout most of that interval, lower-income staff on the highest danger of homelessness noticed their earnings stagnate. And at the same time as wages started to rise in 2020, the area’s homeless inhabitants continued to climb because the pandemic led to widespread job losses and lower off many individuals from psychological well being care. In the meantime, a fentanyl epidemic devastated numerous lives.
Since 2015, each Bay Space county besides Sonoma and Marin has seen homelessness enhance. The biggest spike by far got here in Alameda County, the place the variety of homeless folks greater than doubled to 9,450.
The surge in Alameda was on account of rising rents in areas of deep poverty which have lengthy suffered from underinvestment and historic housing discrimination, mentioned Jonathan Russell, director of housing and homelessness for Alameda County’s well being division.
“Alameda County is a vivid picture of that structural problem,” he mentioned.
In response, officers throughout the county have labored so as to add shelter house and enhance rental help, Russell mentioned. He cited these efforts for a dip within the county’s homeless inhabitants final yr, although homelessness in Oakland nonetheless climbed 9%, to an estimated 5,490 folks.
Oakland now has the very best per-capita homelessness charge of the Bay Space’s three main cities, with 1,258 out of each 100,000 residents missing a everlasting roof over their heads. San Francisco’s homelessness charge is 1,028 per 100,000 residents, with a homeless inhabitants of 8,323. San Jose’s homelessness charge is 654 per 100,000, with 6,340 unhoused residents.
China Richardson, 47, lives on the homeless encampment at Mosswood Park in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Space Information Group)
For China Richardson, who’s spent a lot of the previous 4 years residing in an encampment at Oakland’s Mosswood Park, native officers’ a number of makes an attempt to assist her out of homelessness have failed.
Richardson, 47, mentioned officers paid for a nine-month keep at a motel and in addition tried shifting her to a tiny house shelter. Hunched over a well-worn wood cane, Richardson — who grew to become homeless round 2014 after her mom died and she or he couldn’t afford lease on her personal — defined she gave up the tiny house shelter due to an altercation with a roommate. She was not sure why officers stopped paying for the motel room.
“You get housing, and you end up right back outside,” she mentioned.
Final yr, a scathing state audit referred to as into query the effectiveness of homeless housing and shelter packages throughout California, discovering state officers had did not appropriately monitor $24 billion in homelessness spending between 2019 and 2023.
An accompanying audit singled out San Jose, discovering that the town lacked clear targets for its homelessness packages and had not carefully monitored the nonprofits contracted to function them.
San Jose officers disputed a number of the findings of the California State Auditor report, pointing to a countywide effort that in 2023 helped transfer 2,500 homeless households into everlasting housing. But, underscoring the magnitude of the problem, virtually twice as many grew to become homeless that yr.
In November, nonetheless, Santa Clara County introduced that officers at the moment are housing extra homeless veterans than the quantity turning into homeless. Devoted assets out there to veterans, together with focused rental help, have made all of the distinction, mentioned Kelly Vasquez, chief packages officer with South Bay homeless nonprofit HomeFirst.
Vasquez urged officers to offer comparable ranges of help for different segments of the homeless inhabitants.
“It’s not only possible for veterans,” Vasquez mentioned. “It’s possible for everybody.”
