The preliminary results of this year's point-in-time homeless count, which was conducted in San Francisco in late January, are out and Mayor Daniel Lurie is touting the 4% overall drop in homelessness since 2024.
The day has come where, once every two years, city leaders get to celebrate or bemoan the only really concrete number we have for the population of homeless people living on San Francisco's streets. The biennial Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, as it is called, took place on the morning of January 29, and now the SF Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) has released its findings.
Preliminary numbers show a 4% drop in the overall homeless population, and a dramatic 22% drop in unsheltered homeless people.
The January 2024 count found 8,323 individuals overall who were experiencing homelessness, with 4,353 of those unsheltered.
The new overall count is 7,973, with 3,400 unsheltered.
The department is also touting a 54% drop in youth homelessness, but there was a 15% uptick in family homelessness, with 465 families counted as homeless in 2026.
Flaws in the Point-in-Time Count are discussed whenever a new one is conducted, but officials say that this is the only apples-to-apples comparison that a city has to track its homeless population and the success or failure of its strategies to address homelessness.
Advocates this year are saying this can't be an apples-to-apples comparison because the count was conducted at a different time of day and with a slightly different methodology, as SFist earlier reported — though city officials say they hope this count will be more accurate than earlier ones as a result.
Canvassers were dispatched early in the morning, instead of late at night, in January's count, and rather than using mostly untrained volunteers, this year's counters were a mix of outreach workers and trained volunteers who surveyed individuals about their housing status, rather than only conducting a visual survey.
Mayor Daniel Lurie is already celebrating the drop in the numbers.
"When I took office, we set out to completely transform the city’s work around homelessness, drugs, and behavioral health — to get people off the street and on the path to stability,” Lurie said in a statement. "From the moment someone is experiencing homelessness to the day they enter long-term stable housing, we got to work with urgency, bringing accountability to a system that needed more of it."
Lurie added, "I’m proud to announce incredible progress: Unsheltered homelessness in San Francisco is down 22% to its lowest level in 15 years, the number of people in tents is down 85%, and homelessness is down overall. We have more work to do, but we will be relentless until every San Franciscan has the safe, clean streets they deserve."
Outgoing HSH Executive Director Shireen McSpadden says, "This decrease in homelessness indicates that our strategies are working and that we are successfully helping more people prevent homelessness or find the shelter and support they need to transition out of homelessness."
A full report from the PIT Count, including demographic information, will be released this summer.
Previously: Biennial Homeless Census Shifts to Morning Count In Hopes of Better Accuracy
