Study: Homeless Services Working, But Sustained Funding Needed For Progress

SAN DIEGO, CA — The San Diego region's homeless services staff are moving more people into permanent housing than they used to, even as the total number of people without housing stays fairly steady, according to a report released Wednesday.

The 2025 Data and Performance Report by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness -- which analyzed three years of federal performance data from Fiscal Years 2023 through 2025 -- found that people are also less frequently falling back into homelessness than was once the case.

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"We're seeing real improvement in how many people we're helping into permanent housing and how many are staying housed once they get there," RTFH CEO Tamera Kohler said. "But the system is still serving tens of thousands of people every year, and for some of them -- especially seniors and adults without children -- the wait for housing is still too long."

The report differs from the annual Point-in-Time Count, which measures homelessness on a single night each January. Instead, it is a more thorough analysis of people as they move through the system and ideally out of homelessness.

Over the three-year period looked at, permanent housing exits rose from 23% to 29% with veterans seeing the largest gains -- from 30% to 42%. Additionally, street outreach programs that connect people living unsheltered to services more than doubled their success rate, from 24% to 53%.

The percentage of people who end up returning to a state of homelessness within two years declined from 25% to 21%, and returns within six months from 11% to 9%.

According to the report, the number of people experiencing homelessness for the first time declined across most groups. Households entering into emergency shelter, safe haven and transitional housing projects fell from 5,590 to 5,290, while combined entries across all shelter and permanent housing project types dropped from 6,905 to 6,411, a statement from RTFH said.

However, the length of time people are spending homeless has increased from an average of 185 days to 193 days over the three-year period. Adult- only households reached 202 days and seniors 55 and older averaged 234 days last fiscal year -- the longest of any group tracked.

The total number of households served by the region's homelessness system increased from 35,945 in FY2023 to 38,189 in FY2025, although the latter number is a decrease from a sharp uptick in FY2024.

"Returns to homelessness generally declined compared with FY2023, suggesting progress in housing stability, though some increases in FY2025 show the need for continued monitoring," the report reads. "Taken together, these trends highlight both the system's ongoing efforts to move people into stable housing and the importance of targeted strategies to reduce the length of homelessness, prevent first-time homelessness, and strengthen long-term housing retention."

Continued progress on the region's homelessness crisis will depend on federal, state and local investment, along with federal housing funding, the report's authors conclude.

— City News Service