SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Daniel Lurie said San Francisco’s homeless population has declined to its lowest level since 2011, according to preliminary results from the city’s 2026 Point-in-Time Count, though advocates and officials alike acknowledged questions surrounding changes in the count’s methodology.
The biennial Point-in-Time Count took place on the morning of Jan. 29, 2026, and the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing has now released its findings.
Data shows there has been a “significant decline in homelessness, […] with 1,000 fewer people on the street and unsheltered homelessness decreasing by 22% since the 2024 count — reaching the lowest level recorded since 2011,” according to the City of San Francisco.
In January 2024, the Point-in-Time Count found 8,323 individuals experiencing homelessness, including 4,353 who were unsheltered. This year, the overall count is 7,973 individuals, with 3,400 of them unsheltered.
There are some flaws, however, with this year’s Point-in-Time Count, the most crucial being the new methodology used to collect the data.
According to the Voice of San Francisco, “San Francisco altered the methodology of the count, shifting from a nighttime to early morning survey, and using trained city staff rather than volunteers.”
These counters, a mix of outreach workers and trained volunteers, “surveyed individuals about their housing status, rather than only conducting a visual survey,” news source SFist reported.
Switching the count to the morning was intended to ensure “that we could actually see everyone, and engage with them,” said Mayor Lurie’s homelessness policy chief, Kunal Modi.
This change came after learning about challenges other jurisdictions faced, based on a RAND Corporation study, Modi explained. “We took that input and what we’ve seen from counties across the county.”
Officials described the count as the “only apple-to-apple comparison that a city has to track its homeless population and the success or failure of its strategies to address homelessness,” according to SFist. Advocates, however, “are saying this can’t be an apples-to-apples comparison” because of the methodological changes.
Modi acknowledged the issue, stating that “a big difference was previous counts had been a visual count, in which case a lot of outreach workers were making assumptions or potentially double counting individuals.”
Now, Modi said, “We actually engaged with folks…so we feel very positive about the integrity of the count and the ability for us to get really clean data to help us understand what’s going on.”
SFist reported that city officials “hope this count will be more accurate than earlier ones as a result” of the changes.
Another concern stems from what the Point-in-Time Count emphasized. The data shows that tent and encampment numbers, as well as the number of RVs on city streets, are at their lowest levels.
In February, “there were a total of 155 tents and structures: 61 tents and 94 structures,” and “a total of 435 vehicles, 259 of which were large vehicles that were permitted,” according to ABC 7.
Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition on Homelessness highlighted that “there’s still thousands of unhoused in San Francisco, and focusing on metrics like tents and encampments doesn’t account for that.”
The problem, Friedenbach noted, is that “there is more of an attention on decreasing the visible homelessness,” because tents, structures and RVs are symbols of homelessness.
“That is what the mayor has been going after,” Friedenbach said, “and that’s very unfortunate.”
While there is still much work to be done, as Mayor Lurie acknowledged, he has spoken positively about the progress made so far.
“We have much more work to do,” Mayor Lurie said, “but we are on the right path, and we will continue to drive forward on this plan.”
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