After two years in which homelessness remained a top priority for city leaders in many parts of the Bay Area, the number of people living on the street in San Jose remained virtually unchanged.
San Jose is on an odd-year schedule for its biennial point-in-time census of unhoused people, while San Francisco is on an even-year schedule. Thus we did not have an update on SF's homeless numbers this year, but San Jose's point-in-time count is now in. The city reports a homeless population of 6,503, up just barely from the 6,266 individuals counted in 2023.
As the Mercury News notes, this is somewhat better news than what arrived a few weeks back from the homeless census for Santa Clara County, which found an 8.2% rise in the number from two years prior.
San Francisco similarly saw a 7% uptick in the number of people living on the street in its 2024 count.
Despite having a smaller overall population than San Jose, San Francisco has a larger share of the unhoused, having counted 8,328 individuals in last year's count.
Both San Jose and San Franisco have seen larger proportions of unhoused people in shelters in these most recent point-in-time counts. San Jose counted 2,544 people in shelters on the January night that the count took place this year. That is a significant increase from the 980 who were sheltered prior to the pandemic, in the 2019 count.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan told the Mercury News, "Our focus is ending the encampments and getting everybody indoors." Mahan says that state leaders in Sacramento should focus on the same priorities, and help in the creation of more shelter beds.
"This data proves that the set of policies we have advanced in San Jose in recent years are moving us in the right direction," Mahan tells the paper.
San Jose's latest homeless numbers come on the heels of an exhaustive investigative report by the LA Times into the root causes of Los Angeles's homelessness epidemic, which is the worst in the state and likely the country as a whole. A main culprit: The rapid rise in housing prices between the late 1970s and the 1980s, which seeded the unaffordability crisis we face now as a state.
In the last week, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has backed off a campaign promise to create 1,500 new shelter beds, now saying the city needs to create "the right kind of beds," meaning more beds for mental-health treatment and substance abuse treatment.
The next point-in-time counts for San Francisco and Oakland will take place in six months, in January 2026.
Photo by Naomi August
