HUD Has Not Yet Released 2025 National Homelessness Report

The federal report compiling 2025 point-in-time count data has not been released as of May 13, 2026. This five-month delay is the latest any point-in-time count has ever come out, including the years it was delayed during COVID, Jesse Rabinowitz, spokesperson for the National Homelessness Law Center, said.

The federal government’s annual point-in-time homelessness count is used by city and county governments across the country to determine funding and gauge progress in getting people off the streets.

Every December the federal government releases a report that reveals the number of homeless residents in each state and across the country. The federal report usually comes out in December of the year of the count. For the past two decades the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has required local regions to take a census of their homeless populations every other year in a point-in-time count.

Volunteers count every person they see living outside over a day or two in January and tally people sleeping in shelters. Counters conduct surveys of a sample of unhoused people collecting data on race, age, gender, time spent homeless, medical and mental health conditions and more.

Each jurisdiction known as a continuum of care must submit their point-in-time count to HUD by the spring and release their local data to the public.

HUD verifies the data, tallies the total count for each state and country, submits a public report to Congress and uploads detailed data on its website. In 2021 the report came out the following February due to COVID disruptions.

It is unclear why the 2025 federal homelessness report still is not out as of May 2026. HUD refused to comment on the delay of the 2025 report. “It is perplexing that HUD has not released this information,” Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for Gov.

Gavin Newsom, said in a statement to CalMatters. California tallied its own data showing a 9% drop in the number of people sleeping outside. Data provided by the Newsom administration show a 4% overall decrease in homelessness between 2024 and 2025.

Data provided by the Newsom administration show a 9% drop in people sleeping in tents on the sidewalk, in cars or in other places not meant for habitation between 2024 and 2025. The data covers the 30 California continuums of care that counted their street homeless populations in 2025.

The remaining 14 California continuums of care counted in 2026 instead and are not included in the 2025 comparison.

California’s analysis leaves out information such as the race, age and mental health status of the people who are counted. Some counties including San Francisco already released their 2026 count data. Nearly a quarter of all unhoused Americans lived in California as of 2024.

California had more than 187000 homeless people according to the most recent HUD report as of 2024. In 2024 the national homelessness count hit 771480, an 18% increase from the year before. , Minnesota, Florida and Maine last year.

CalMatters reported that if homelessness dropped nationwide in 2025 it would be the first time in eight years.