Each year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) releases the Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress, to understand the state of homelessness in America. The report is based on the Point-in-Time Count, an annual census taken to estimate how many people are experiencing homelessness. This report provides a benchmark for understanding trends and public response. [1]
HUD’s 2025 report found that 745,652 people were experiencing homelessness on the night of the Point-in-Time Count, with 36 percent living unsheltered. Compared to the previous year, overall homelessness dropped by 3 percent. But compared to 2013 — the beginning of the decade-plus period when Housing First became the dominant federal policy direction in homelessness programs — homelessness has increased by 27 percent. That prompted HUD Secretary Scott Turner to say, “The data is clear that the status quo of ‘housing first’ has failed to meaningfully reduce homelessness, resulting in crisis levels of people living on the streets.” [1]
These numbers are far more than data points, they represent men, women, and children facing poverty to the point of homelessness in our nation.
Now that the HUD numbers are in and presented to Congress, we can crack open the report, pull out the calculator, crunch the numbers, and ask what they really say about homelessness in Oregon and if the housing first model worked in our neck of the woods.
Nationally homelessness fell by 3% but in Oregon numbers moved in the opposite direction. Roughly 27,000 people met the definition of homeless in our state which is a 19% increase from 2024. And when it comes to unsheltered people, last year 16,000 individuals were sleeping outside, in vehicles, or in other places not meant for human habitation. [2]
It is not as if Oregon is ignoring the problem, Governor Tina Kotek has continued Oregon’s homelessness state of emergency for the third year which focused on funding shelter expansion, rehousing, prevention, and behavioral health services. State officials point to thousands of shelter beds created or maintained, thousands of households rehoused, and many more prevented from falling into homelessness. [3]
But this is where the math and precise language matters.
Our state officials often use the phrase “created or maintained” when speaking about shelter beds. That wording matters. “Maintained” beds are not the same as new shelter beds. HUD’s 2025 count shows that 16,512 people were living unsheltered in Oregon. [2] HUD’s Housing Inventory Count listed 8,756 year-round emergency shelter beds available statewide. [5] That means even if every emergency shelter bed in Oregon were available, appropriate, and filled on the night of the count, the state would still be short 7,756 emergency shelter beds for the people already sleeping outside. And according to HUD’s inventory, Oregon added only 528 net year-round emergency shelter beds from 2024 to 2025. [4] [5] If Oregon wanted to add enough emergency shelter capacity simply to keep pace with the roughly 4,300-person increase in homelessness from 2024 to 2025, it would have needed more than 4,000 additional beds. Instead, it added 528. The result is not surprising: Oregon’s homeless population increased by 19%. The system did add capacity, but nowhere near enough to keep pace with the crisis.
In other words, Oregon’s shelter system grew, but the crisis grew much faster.
The longer-term numbers are even more sobering. Oregon’s homeless population grew from 13,822 people in 2013 to 27,119 people in 2025, an increase of about 96%, more than three and a half times the national increase of 27%. [2] [6] But when we look specifically at emergency shelter beds, Oregon still had only 8,756 year-round emergency shelter beds in 2025. [5] That means today’s emergency shelter capacity is not even enough to shelter the number of people Oregon counted as homeless in 2013, much less the number counted in 2025.
How much does this add up to in dollars? That is hard to say with precision because we cannot make an exact dollar-to-bed comparison. Oregon’s homelessness dollars also fund prevention, rehousing, operations, services, and administration. [8] [9] But even with that caveat, the gap is striking. Oregon’s 2025 count showed 16,512 people living unsheltered, while HUD listed only 8,756 year-round emergency shelter beds statewide, leaving a gap of 7,756 beds. [2] [5] HUD’s inventory shows Oregon added only 528 net year-round emergency shelter beds from 2024 to 2025. [4] [5] Using the state’s rough spending-to-bed ratio only as an illustration, closing the remaining emergency shelter gap would represent hundreds of millions of additional dollars. We cannot claim an exact price tag per bed, and that is not the point. The point is that the current approach is producing too little immediate shelter capacity, far too slowly, at a scale that is becoming increasingly difficult, perhaps impossible to catch up.
All of these numbers raise a fair question: after years of spending, why has the system produced so little additional shelter capacity compared with the scale of the crisis?
Shelter alone will not solve homelessness, and no serious person should pretend that it will. But without enough immediate shelter capacity, the rest of the system cannot function as promised.
Low-barrier emergency shelter is supposed to be the entry point into the Housing First system: a safe place where people experiencing homelessness can come inside, be assessed, receive help, and begin moving toward housing. But that model cannot function well when thousands of people cannot even get through the front door.
I have been talking about the failure of the Housing First system for years, and one of the most frustrating parts of these conversations is how quickly people within the current system defend it when challenged. When people question whether Oregon’s approach is actually working, the response is often not humility or course correction, but insistence that the model is effective and only needs more funding. Oregon has even joined litigation against the federal government when HUD attempted to change the direction of homelessness funding away from the current framework. State leaders argued that rapid rehousing, supportive housing, and the existing Continuum of Care system are proven approaches that should not be disrupted. [10] But honestly, if the approach were working at the scale promised, the numbers would look different. After years of emergency response, increased spending, and repeated assurances that the model works, Oregon should not be seeing homelessness rise while shelter capacity falls so far behind the actual need.
This matters here in Southern Oregon because state and federal funding shape what local governments and nonprofits are able to do. Local agencies often do not get to design the response from scratch; they pursue the programs that are funded. If the state continues to prioritize an approach that is not producing results at the scale needed, then local communities will continue building their response around that same approach.
Money will be spent. Reports will be written. Programs will be launched. But if the underlying strategy is failing, people in places like Medford and Jackson County will continue to suffer outside while the system measures activity instead of transformation. The issue is not whether local governments and nonprofits care. Many do. The issue is whether the funded approach is actually working to meet the real needs of people in our community.
This also matters to the Medford Gospel Mission, even though we do not take government money and are not required to follow the government’s homelessness system. It matters because the people we serve are often trapped in systems that promise help but do not truly restore.
A broken system does not just fail to solve poverty; over time, it can become one of the causes of poverty. When people are moved from program to program without real transformation, when accountability is avoided, when spiritual and relational brokenness are ignored, and when success is measured by activity instead of restored lives, people remain stuck.
The Mission exists because people need more than management. They need hope, truth, community, healing, responsibility, and the restoring grace of Jesus Christ. If the dominant public system cannot provide that, then the work of the Mission is not less important.
It is more important.
[1] HUD’s release on the 2025 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report reports the national 2025 total, unsheltered count, 3% year-over-year decrease, and 27% increase since 2013. https://www.hud.gov/news/hud-no-26-037
[2] Portland State University’s 2025 statewide homelessness report summary lists Oregon’s 2025 total count of 27,119 people, 10,607 sheltered people, and 16,512 unsheltered people. https://www.pdx.edu/news/portland-state-releases-new-2025-statewide-homelessness-report
[3] Oregon Governor Tina Kotek’s office reports the extension of the homelessness emergency and goals including rehousing, prevention, permanent supportive housing investment, behavioral health capacity, and coordination between housing and health care. https://apps.oregon.gov/oregon-newsroom/OR/GOV/Posts/Post/governor-kotek-issues-executive-order-to-extend-homelessness-emergency
[4] HUD’s 2024 Oregon Housing Inventory Count report lists Oregon’s 2024 year-round emergency shelter, safe haven, and transitional housing beds. https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_HIC_State_OR_2024.pdf
[5] HUD’s 2025 Oregon Housing Inventory Count report lists Oregon’s 2025 year-round emergency shelter, safe haven, and transitional housing beds, including 11,150 total year-round beds and 8,756 emergency shelter beds. https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_HIC_State_OR_2025.pdf
[6] HUD’s 2013 Oregon PIT report lists 13,822 total homeless persons in Oregon in 2013. https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_PopSub_State_OR_2013.pdf
[7] HUD’s 2013 Oregon Housing Inventory Count report lists 7,922 year-round emergency shelter, safe haven, and transitional housing beds. https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_HIC_State_OR_2013.pdf
[8] Oregon’s 2024 Homelessness Response Framework says the state secured $500 million across the 2023–2025 biennium to reduce homelessness. https://www.oregon.gov/gov/policies/Documents/State%20Homelessness%20Response%20Framework%202024.pdf
[9] A March 2025 legislative analysis says OHCS reported spending 60% of total funds, excluding six-year capital construction expenditure limitation. https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2025R1/Downloads/CommitteeMeetingDocument/294844
[10] Oregon DOJ’s release on the HUD lawsuit says Oregon challenged HUD policy changes to the Continuum of Care program and argued the changes threatened rapid rehousing and supportive housing programs. https://www.doj.state.or.us/media-home/news-media-releases/ag-rayfield-sues-over-hud-policy-that-would-force-people-into-homelessness/
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