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Effective Date:Nov 7, 2026
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Friday that homelessness in the United States recorded its largest single-year decrease on record, with the 2026 Point-in-Time count finding 698,425 people homeless on a single night in January, a 6.3% decline from the count taken in early 2025.
The figures come from the annual count conducted each January by local Continuum of Care organizations and compiled by HUD into the national estimate that drives federal homelessness funding and policy. The department framed the result as vindication for a sweeping change of direction it has pursued over the past year, while outside analysts urged caution in attributing a January snapshot to policies that in many cases took effect months later.
The Point-in-Time count is the only nationwide census of people experiencing homelessness, covering both sheltered populations in emergency shelters and transitional housing and unsheltered populations counted by street outreach teams. The 2026 count of 698,425 people follows several years in which the national figure climbed to historic highs, including the 2024 count that recorded the largest homeless population since the modern count began.
HUD said the 6.3% decline since President Trump took office in 2025 marks the largest recorded decrease in the history of the count. The department contrasted the new figure with the trend under the previous administration, noting that homelessness increased roughly 28% between 2022 and 2025. Even with the decline, the 2026 figure remains near historic highs by the department's own acknowledgment, a point Secretary Scott Turner conceded in the announcement.
"President Trump's actions to secure the border, get criminal illegals off our streets, and restore safety to our communities drove a historic decrease in homelessness," Turner said in the release. "However, after a decade of failed Housing First policies, homelessness remains near a historic high. Clearly, there is more work to do."
Independent analyses published alongside the HUD announcement broadly confirm that the January count showed improvement. The National Alliance to End Homelessness said its review of the data shows further reductions in homelessness, and Community Solutions published 2026 estimates pointing the same direction. Both organizations noted that the count was taken in January, before the administration's largest funding and policy changes had taken hold, which complicates any claim about cause and effect.
The data release doubled as a policy statement. Turner said HUD is "dispensing with" the Housing First approach, the model that has anchored federal homelessness policy since the George W. Bush administration and that prioritizes moving people into permanent housing without preconditions such as sobriety or treatment participation. In its place, HUD is implementing what it calls Treatment First, which elevates addiction treatment and behavioral health requirements within federally funded homelessness programs.
The shift has been building for more than a year. In July 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets," which directed federal agencies to confront substance abuse as part of the homelessness response and empowered HUD to fold treatment requirements into its grant programs. In August 2026, HUD rolled out a "Best Practices Toolkit: Addressing Homelessness and Addiction through Treatment First," developed with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Turner said the department is "rejecting the addiction-fueled depravity seen from LA's Skid Row to New York's 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' and moving to Treatment First to restore lives of self-sufficiency." The release also credited the Supreme Court's decision reaffirming the authority of local governments to limit encampments, a reference to the Grants Pass ruling that allowed cities to enforce camping bans even when shelter beds are unavailable.
The practical stakes of the policy turn run through the Continuum of Care program, the roughly $3.6 billion annual grant competition that funds the bulk of local homelessness services. Turner announced in June that the most recent competition was the most competitive in the program's history, drawing a record-setting 3,700 new applications from communities across the country under revised criteria that reward treatment-oriented approaches.
For public housing authorities and affordable housing operators, the change is not abstract. Many PHAs partner with their local Continuum of Care on voucher preferences, supportive housing set-asides, and emergency housing voucher administration. A scoring system that favors treatment-first programming over permanent supportive housing could reshape which local projects win renewal funding in the next competition, and housing providers have been watching the criteria closely.
Advocates for the Housing First model argue the evidence base runs in the other direction. Permanent supportive housing, which pairs subsidized units with voluntary services, has decades of research showing high housing retention rates among chronically homeless people, including those with serious mental illness and addiction. Critics of the new approach warn that conditioning assistance on treatment compliance pushes people back to the street.
Reaction to the announcement split along familiar lines. The National Alliance to End Homelessness acknowledged the improving numbers while warning that proposed structural changes to homelessness funding, including efforts to cap permanent housing costs within Continuum of Care grants, could erase the gains. "New analysis shows further reductions in homelessness," the organization said, while continuing to press for the housing-led strategies it credits with driving the improvement.
The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund condemned the Treatment First toolkit when it was released in August, arguing that "housing is the treatment" and that the federal guidance misrepresents the research on what ends homelessness for people with disabilities. The Drug Policy Alliance called the administration's framing "rhetoric versus reality," and a November commentary in the journal Psychiatric Services urged rigorous evaluation before the field abandons an approach with a long evidence record.
The administration's release also leaned heavily on immigration enforcement as an explanation, asserting that "illegal immigrants filled America's homeless shelters" under the previous administration and that the decline was concentrated in states with sanctuary policies. Independent researchers have not validated that claim, and the January count data published Friday does not break out immigration status.
The Point-in-Time count is a one-night snapshot, not a running total. On a single night in the last ten days of January, volunteers and outreach workers in nearly 400 Continuum of Care regions count people in shelters and transitional housing and attempt to enumerate those sleeping outdoors, in vehicles, and in abandoned buildings. HUD then assembles the local counts into the national estimate. The methodology is widely regarded as an undercount of the true homeless population, but because it is conducted the same way each year, it remains the standard yardstick for measuring trends.
HUD's release Friday did not include a state-by-state breakdown, but it asserted that homelessness "increased largely in states with Sanctuary City policies like New York, Illinois, California, and Massachusetts" during the prior administration, implying those states also figured in the national movement. The full subpopulation tables, which will show whether the decline was concentrated among veterans, families with children, or chronically homeless individuals, are expected with the Annual Homeless Assessment Report.
That distribution matters for housing providers. Veteran homelessness has fallen steadily for more than a decade under targeted voucher programs such as HUD-VASH, while family and chronic homelessness have proven more sensitive to rents and shelter capacity. If the 2026 decline turns out to be concentrated in categories with dedicated funding streams, it will tell a different story than a broad-based improvement across every subpopulation.
Local housing authorities also read the count against their own waiting lists and voucher lease-up rates. A falling count in a high-cost metro can reflect genuine progress, out-migration, or simply a colder night than the year before, and PHA executives interviewed in past years have cautioned against reading too much into a single January figure in either direction.
The detailed 2026 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, which breaks the count down by state, subpopulation, and shelter status, typically follows the topline announcement in the coming weeks. Housing agencies and congressional appropriators will use those tables to evaluate where the declines actually occurred and which subpopulations, including veterans, families, and chronically homeless individuals, drove the change.
Meanwhile, HUD's revised Continuum of Care criteria will face their first full test as communities submit applications under the new framework and as any legal challenges to the funding conditions move forward. Several jurisdictions and provider networks signaled earlier this year that conditioning homelessness funds on treatment mandates could draw litigation similar to the suits filed over other grant conditions imposed in 2025 and 2026.
For the affordable housing industry, the immediate takeaway is simpler: the largest federal homelessness programs are being reoriented in real time, the organizations that operate them are adapting their applications accordingly, and the data both sides will cite for the next year now exists. Whether the 2026 decline is a turning point or a one-year improvement will depend on what happens to funding, rents, and shelter capacity in the counts still to come.
HUD announced Friday that the 2026 Point-in-Time count found 698,425 people homeless on a single night in January, a 6.3% decrease since 2025 that the department called the largest recorded drop in American history.
The announcement paired the new data with a sharp policy turn: Secretary Scott Turner said HUD is moving away from the Housing First approach that has guided federal homelessness policy for more than a decade and toward Treatment First, which prioritizes addiction treatment and sobriety requirements in federally funded programs.
HUD attributed the decline to the administration's border enforcement, a Supreme Court decision affirming local authority to clear encampments, and a July 2025 executive order directing agencies to address substance abuse in homelessness programs. Independent analysts cautioned that the January count predates most of the policy shift.
Advocacy groups offered mixed reactions. The National Alliance to End Homelessness said its analysis confirms reductions but warned that proposed funding changes could reverse them, while disability rights organization DREDF condemned the Treatment First toolkit released in August as undermining evidence-based housing models.
For housing authorities and multifamily operators, the shift matters because Continuum of Care grants, the largest federal homelessness funding stream, drew a record 3,700 applications in June under new competitive criteria that reward treatment-oriented programming.
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