Homelessness in the US saw its largest drop in more than a decade last year

After years of increasing to record-high levels, the homeless population in the United States dropped more than 6 percent in 2025. It is the largest drop in more than a decade.

In numbers, that amounts to roughly 49,000 fewer people without housing. It is the second year in a row that homelessness has declined, with a smaller drop in 2024.

Both analyses find there are still nearly 700,000 people in the US living in shelters or on the streets, significantly more than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

"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," Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner said in a press release announcing the results of an annual count in communities around the country. The agency had not yet posted a detailed report.

A second independent analysis based on the same count, but commissioned by the advocacy group National Alliance to End Homelessness, found a similar decline but credited different reasons for it.

"It's good news that more people are getting housed, and that the programs that are funded by Congress are working," said CEO Ann Oliva.

The Trump administration cited its changes in immigration policy as a key factor in the decline. During the Biden administration, New York, Chicago, Boston and Denver all saw a surge in asylum seekers who turned up at homeless shelters. "That's also the four cities that have driven half of the drop most recently," said Devon Kurtz, Public Safety Policy Director at the Cicero Institute, an administration ally on homelessness policy.

Kurtz also pointed to declines in cities like San Francisco, which is moving to support more sober-living options, housing that bans drugs and alcohol. But critics say that can send more people back to the street if they relapse, which is common.

The administration argues that the requirement to be drug-free would help more people achieve recovery, and wants to expand such programs. In fact, the administration wants to overhaul several billion dollars in homelessness spending and shift it toward short-term housing with mandated addiction and mental health treatment. So far that has been blocked by courts.

The administration says longstanding federal policy of getting people into permanent housing first, then offering voluntary treatment, has failed, and is to blame for the pandemic spike in homelessness. But Oliva, with the homelessness alliance, said programs that get people off the street without preconditions were a big part of the latest declines, especially among veterans.

Homelessness among US veterans was down more than 7 percent last year, and has declined nearly 60 percent since 2010. By contrast, Oliva said there was a small uptick in people who have been homeless for a long time, who are more likely to suffer from mental health problems and addiction.

HUD also credited a crackdown on homeless encampments after the Supreme Court in 2024 said cities can ban people from sleeping and camping in public places. Oliva said the analysis her group commissioned showed that cities with such bans "actually did worse than the national average."

Oliva noted last year's decline in homelessness was broad and likely due to a number of factors, including softening rental markets in some places. Even though rents are still high, they are down from record peaks during the pandemic, and that could stem the flow of newly unhoused people. There were also declines in places that saw major weather disasters, like western North Carolina and Hawaii, where HUD and other groups moving in to help those displaced also assisted unhoused people.