In the coming days, homeless outreach workers nationwide will head to the streets over the course of one night as part of the annual effort to count how many homeless people there are in America. But unlike previous years, there won’t be anything to compare it to, because the Trump administration has not released yet last year’s figures.
The effort, called the “Point in Time” count, has taken place since at least 2005 and is conducted by armies of volunteers on one night at the end of January. It’s statutorily required by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in order to allocate funding to homeless services across the country.
The last homeless count, from 2024, showed homelessness had reached a historic high of 771,480 people, which was an almost 20% increase from the year prior.
“There is no standard timeline for the release of the Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR), as precedent shows. The 2021 AHAR was released in February 2022, while the 2020 report was released in March 2021," a HUD spokesperson said. "HUD is on pace to produce a thorough and comprehensive AHAR to provide the best data in addressing America’s homelessness problem."
In 2025, cities and counties released the results of their local homeless counts, but HUD never released the national picture. Some local counts show the number of homeless people declined. In Boston, the figure went down by 4%, and in Chicago the homeless population dropped dramatically, by 60%.
“The current lack of information from HUD on the numbers of homeless Americans adds to the uncertainty and untrust Americans will build with this administration. This is more than a lack of transparency; this is malpractice,” said homeless advocate Donald Whitehead, who serves as the executive director at the National Coalition for the Homeless. Whitehead says he has repeatedly called HUD Secretary Scott Turner to ask about the holdup and has not received an explanation. He said homeless organizations usually work in a collaborative effort to analyze homelessness trends regardless of the administration.
“It is incredibly concerning that our government is unwilling to share the scope of homelessness in our country,” said Jeff Olivet, who now serves as senior adviser to the Initiative on Health and Homelessness at Harvard's School of Public Health.
While the Biden administration did release the figures in 2024, it was done quietly, between Christmas and New Year’s, almost a year after the count occurred.
