Homelessness Is Down in Alameda County. Can It Maintain That Progress?

The biggest decrease was in Oakland, which saw a 20% drop in its unhoused population. The result reverses a trend recorded in 2024, when the city’s homelessness rose 9% while the county overall saw a modest decline.

“Today’s proof is that we are doing the right thing,” Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said Tuesday.

Still, Oakland, which accounts for more than half of the county’s unhoused individuals, despite representing just 22% of the population, is the “epicenter” of the county’s crisis, she said.

“The homelessness crisis in Alameda County, here in Oakland specifically, is at its root a racial equity crisis,” Lee said. “It’s a product of decades, and I mean decades, of redlining, disinvestment and displacement. We can’t sweep this under the rug.”

Lee said Oakland has the lofty goal of reducing homelessness by 50% in five years.

The city has 1,000 units of housing for formerly unhoused people that are already in construction or set to break ground next year, and 2,000 new affordable housing units in its pipeline, according to Lee.

But Oakland is also facing budget headwinds, and Lee warned that without additional funding, the city could have to cut about 190 shelter beds. In June, Oaklanders will vote on whether to pass Measure E, an annual parcel tax that could raise $34 million for the city annually.

A daylong count of homelessness, the PIT is a federal survey conducted every other January in counties across the country. While the method is considered an imperfect measure of homelessness, it is useful for identifying trends.

The 1,300 volunteers who walked Alameda County block by block in one morning this year found that the number of families with children and unaccompanied youth under 25 experiencing homelessness decreased, while veteran homelessness rose slightly. A few cities, including Berkeley, Fremont and Livermore, saw slight upticks in their total unhoused populations.

One of the survey’s biggest findings was a continued rise in the number of unhoused people who are sheltered in Alameda County, with 1,140 fewer people sleeping on the streets compared to 2024. Since 2019, that percentage has increased from 21% to 37%.

It’s not entirely clear whether the number of unsheltered unhoused people was impacted by policy shifts after the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision gave cities the right to enforce camping bans, though Oakland and Berkeley are among the cities that tightened encampment management policies that had been disallowed under a previous lower court order.

In neighboring San Francisco, which has focused aggressively on clearing encampments since the 2024 ruling, unsheltered homelessness plummeted 22%. More than 50% of the city’s homeless population is sheltered.

Heather Freinkel, the outreach team supervisor with Alameda County’s Homeless Action Center, said that after sweeps of larger encampments, “It’s likely that unsheltered residents are seeking solitary and scattered locations to avoid being targeted, which would make them harder for [Point In Time] volunteers to find.”

She said she does not believe that there has been a significant net increase in the number of unsheltered people being offered housing or shelter since the last count in 2024.

Local leaders from across the county credited an influx of local policy to fund homelessness services and build new housing, including Measure W, a 0.5% sales tax passed in 2020 to generate about $150 million a year for rapid rehousing, rental subsidies and expanded emergency shelter and permanent supportive housing.

Earlier this year, the county awarded $50 million in Measure W revenue to 10 projects in various cities, which will provide 900 new housing units, including 346 for people experiencing homelessness.

Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley, who represents parts of Oakland and Pleasanton and Castro Valley, said Measure W would allocate another $50 million to focus on homelessness prevention in the next year. For the first time on record, Alameda County saw more people move out of homelessness into housing than enter homelessness in 2025, Russell said.

“If we can turn off that spigot and stop people from becoming homeless, then we’ll eventually work our way out of this crisis,” Miley said.