Orange County’s biannual headcount of homeless people shows the number of houseless residents has dropped, yet local officials aren’t sure exactly how that decrease happened. 

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. 

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. 

To read the report, click here.

Doug Becht, director of the county’s Office of Care Coordination that handles homelessness, highlighted how for the first time ever they counted more people in shelters than on the streets. 

“It exemplifies our community’s commitment to provide a comprehensive, dignified system of care,” Becht said at a Monday afternoon press conference. “What we are sure of here in Orange County is over the last 10 years we’ve built an effective and comprehensive system of care.” 

David Duran, one of the cofounders of Housing is a Human Right OC, said that the count is at best a “guestimate” on how many homeless people are in Orange County in a Monday interview. 

“I don’t think it was ever designed to be accurate,” Duran said. “I think it’s not getting any better.” 

When asked about how those numbers dropped, Becht said they don’t have an answer on how those numbers actually dropped. 

“Today starts the journey of looking into the data and understanding,” Becht said. “I think it’s too early for us to be able to give an exact answer on how we got to the 13% reduction.” 

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’s reports. 

[Read: Are OC Supervisors Setting Unrealistic Goals on New Homeless Shelter Operator?]

In March, Becht noted that the shelters were doing everything right – there’s just nowhere to send people. 

“The one they’re challenged with is the percentage going into housing when they exit,” Becht said at the time. “That one is difficult because housing is largely dictated by the market and the operator doesn’t have as great of an impact on the market as we’d like them to.”

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. 

The newly released headcount comes after an OC Grand Jury found that the county’s efforts over the last decade have been “largely unsuccessful.” 

[Read: Grand Jury: Orange County Again Fails to Curb Homelessness]

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.

He also noted an increasing number of people who’ve made it off the streets are struggling to stay housed. 

“I’m starting to get more phone calls from people who are housed that were previously unhoused,” Duran said. “They’ve 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 … that speaks volumes to me.”  

Becht said this year they beefed up their county efforts by having about “30-40” 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. 

That’s a population that made up roughly 25% of the county’s 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. 

“Folks living in vehicles is a challenging group to survey through the count,” Becht said. “We 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.” 

Becht couldn’t answer how much housing the county needs to fix the problem, and repeatedly said the report should not be used to assess the county’s progress. 

“I 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 – it’s a snapshot of what homelessness looks like,” Becht said. “It doesn’t give us how we got here or where we need to go from here…that’s really an analysis starting now.” 

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. 

OC Board of Supervisors Chairman Doug Chafee said officials need to focus on preventing homelessness. 

“While this year’s 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.”

Noah Biesiada is a reporter with the Voice of OC. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.