Every two years, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires that all communities receiving federal funding for homelessness services conduct a Point-in-Time (PIT) Count of people experiencing homelessness. The PIT Count is the primary source of nationwide data on homelessness and identifies people living in unsheltered and sheltered settings. HSH conducted the 2022 PIT Count on February 23, 2022.
HSH released preliminary data from the 2022 Point-in-Time Count in May. We are currently working with Applied Survey Research to prepare additional data for the full report. The full report will be available in July 2022 and will include demographic information and other characteristics about the unhoused population. Additional information will not be available until then.
Sheltered and Unsheltered Count: Preliminary Data
Since the 2019 PIT Count, unsheltered homelessness decreased in San Francisco by 15 percent. In 2019, there were 5,180 unsheltered people experiencing homelessness. In 2022, this number dropped to 4,397. This decrease corresponds with a significant increase in housing and shelter resources.
Total homelessness (combining sheltered and unsheltered people) decreased by 3.5 percent since 2019, dropping from 8,035 to 7,754 people.
This drop also represents a 9 percent reduction in homeless households (meaning both adult couples and families with children).
In 2022, 3,357 people were staying in shelters. This number is an 18 percent increase from the 2,855 people staying in shelters in 2019.
This rise corresponds with a 24 percent increase in available shelter beds. Learn more about HSH’s shelter inventory.
Unhoused people were more likely to be sheltered in 2022. 43 percent of the homeless population was sheltered in 2022, compared to 36 percent in 2019.
There were 2,691 chronically homeless people in 2022 compared to 3,030 in 2019. This represents an 11 percent decrease in chronic homelessness.
Preliminary Data on Specific Subpopoulations
- Homelessness among youth under 24 decreased by 6 percent from 2019 to 2022, from 1,145 to 1,073 people.
- Parenting youth households experiencing homelessness decreased by 47 percent, from 36 to 19 households.
- Unhoused families decreased 1 percent from 2019 to 2022, from 208 to 205 households.
- This decline occurred despite new efforts in 2022 to identify unhoused families.
- The number of unhoused veterans remained flat, with 608 in 2019 and 605 in 2022.
- Veterans were more likely to be sheltered in 2022: 19 percent of veterans were sheltered in 2019 and 33 percent were sheltered in 2022.
About the PIT Count
Full PIT Counts typically take place in odd-numbered years during the last week of January. San Francisco’s last full PIT Count took place in 2019. In 2021, HUD approved a waiver exempting San Francisco from conducting the unsheltered component of the 2021 PIT Count due to the COVID-19 pandemic. HSH still conducted the sheltered component of the 2021 PIT Count in line with HUD requirements.
In 2022, due to the impact of the omicron COVID-19 surge, San Francisco requested approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to postpone the 2022 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count from late January to Wednesday, February 23, 2022. With this decision, San Francisco joined other Bay Area agencies in requesting a postponement to support a safe and successful count. Despite the delayed count, results will still be available during the summer of 2022 on a timeline similar to the original schedule.
To conduct the 2022 PIT Count, outreach workers and volunteers walked or drove routes covering the entire geography of San Francisco to count people experiencing homelessness the night of February 23, 2022. The City also collected information from all emergency shelters and transitional housing sites.
This information is used for strategic planning and program design. The PIT Count results impact funding and improve our understanding of the size and characteristics of our homeless population.