{"id":323421,"date":"2026-05-19T21:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/323421\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T21:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:06:15","slug":"how-did-orange-countys-homeless-population-shrink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/323421\/","title":{"rendered":"How Did Orange County\u2019s Homeless Population Shrink?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Orange County\u2019s biannual headcount of homeless people shows the number of houseless residents has dropped, yet local officials aren\u2019t sure exactly how that decrease happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The count is part of a federal mandate called the Point in Time Count, where officials fan out across the county and survey the number of homeless residents over a three-day period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

County leaders say this year, homelessness dropped by over 13% compared to their 2024 count, with over 6,300 people remaining either on the streets or in a shelter compared to 7,322 in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To read the report, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Doug Becht, director of the county\u2019s Office of Care Coordination that handles homelessness, highlighted how for the first time ever they counted more people in shelters than on the streets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt exemplifies our community\u2019s commitment to provide a comprehensive, dignified system of care,\u201d Becht said at a Monday afternoon press conference. \u201cWhat we are sure of here in Orange County is over the last 10 years we\u2019ve built an effective and comprehensive system of care.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

David Duran, one of the cofounders of Housing is a Human Right OC, said that the count is at best a \u201cguestimate\u201d on how many homeless people are in Orange County in a Monday interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it was ever designed to be accurate,\u201d Duran said. \u201cI think it\u2019s not getting any better.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

When asked about how those numbers dropped, Becht said they don\u2019t have an answer on how those numbers actually dropped.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cToday starts the journey of looking into the data and understanding,\u201d Becht said. \u201cI think it\u2019s too early for us to be able to give an exact answer on how we got to the 13% reduction.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The drop also comes as county shelters are failing to hit their county mandated goals of getting people into housing, with less than one in five people leaving a shelter going to housing according to the operator\u2019s reports.\u00a0<\/p>\n

[Read: Are OC Supervisors Setting Unrealistic Goals on New Homeless Shelter Operator?<\/a>]<\/p>\n

In March, Becht noted that the shelters were doing everything right \u2013 there\u2019s just nowhere to send people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one they\u2019re challenged with is the percentage going into housing when they exit,\u201d Becht said at the time. \u201cThat one is difficult because housing is largely dictated by the market and the operator doesn\u2019t have as great of an impact on the market as we\u2019d like them to.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a county report from last year, nearly 85% of the homeless people in Orange County have been on the streets for over a year, with most of them on the street a decade or less.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The newly released headcount comes after an OC Grand Jury found that the county\u2019s efforts over the last decade have been \u201clargely unsuccessful.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

[Read: Grand Jury: Orange County Again Fails to Curb Homelessness<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Duran noted the drop could be partially driven by local police departments being allowed to enforce anti-camping laws on homeless residents again, which came after the Supreme Court overturned a precedent requiring counties and cities to offer shelter beds before they could push people off the streets.<\/p>\n

He also noted an increasing number of people who\u2019ve made it off the streets are struggling to stay housed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m starting to get more phone calls from people who are housed that were previously unhoused,\u201d Duran said. \u201cThey\u2019ve gone through the process, but now because of cutbacks and other challenges, people are asking where can I get some food? Where can I get this or that \u2026 that speaks volumes to me.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Becht said this year they beefed up their county efforts by having about \u201c30-40\u201d trained surveyors out in the field at any given time, along with over 1,300 volunteers over the three days in question, with the hopes of counting people living in vehicles and other housing situations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a population that made up roughly 25% of the county\u2019s homeless residents according to a report released by the county last year, with most of those living in vehicles while the rest lived in inoperable RVs or other housing situations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFolks living in vehicles is a challenging group to survey through the count,\u201d Becht said. \u201cWe had roughly somewhere around 30-40 professional staff that were a part of each shift, meaning 30-40 professional outreach workers that participated the night and morning of all three days.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Becht couldn\u2019t answer how much housing the county needs to fix the problem, and repeatedly said the report should not be used to assess the county\u2019s progress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI really caution looking at those reports and basing progress or work solely based on the city breakdowns. The point in time count is exactly that \u2013 it\u2019s a snapshot of what homelessness looks like,\u201d Becht said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t give us how we got here or where we need to go from here\u2026that\u2019s really an analysis starting now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

County supervisors largely praised the report in a series of statements on Monday afternoon, with several noting they wanted to increase a focus on prevention to stop people from going into homelessness at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

OC Board of Supervisors Chairman Doug Chafee said officials need to focus on preventing homelessness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile this year\u2019s results are encouraging, there remains a great deal of work to do to help prevent homelessness and provide coordinated care for those who are already homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noah Biesiada is a reporter with the Voice of OC. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org. <\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orange County\u2019s biannual headcount of homeless people shows the number of houseless residents has dropped, yet local officials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,6703,134720,105448,4765,61773,2267],"class_list":["post-323421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-county-government","tag-doug-becht","tag-homeless-in-orange-county","tag-orange-county-board-of-supervisors","tag-point-in-time-count","tag-voice-of-oc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}