Important context around the 2026 PIT Count
Written by Julian Crown, Policy and Research Associate, Housing Matters
Santa Cruz County’s Point-in-Time (“PIT”) Count is an annual effort to estimate how many people across the county are experiencing homelessness on a given night. The 2026 PIT Count found approximately 12% more people experiencing homelessness than in 2025—an increase of about 174 people.
At first glance, that looks like a significant increase. The numbers require important context, 72% of the increase in total homelessness is attributable to a methodological change: unlike in previous years, this year’s count included people staying in safe parking and sleeping programs.
With that context in mind, a different story emerges from the PIT count: homelessness is showing signs of growth, and the underlying increase is relatively modest despite a historic housing crisis and devastating cuts to our social safety nets. That modest increase is a testament to the resilience of local service providers and people experiencing housing insecurity, who have continued building pathways to housing even as the programs supporting those pathways are crumbling. However, it is also a cause for concern. Resilience cannot replace resources indefinitely, and providers cannot perpetually do more with less, no matter how much they want to help.
The conditions that produce homelessness in our community are getting harder to overcome. Santa Cruz remains the state and nation’s least affordable rental market,[1] while deeply affordable housing production continues to fall far short of local goals.[2] At the same time, affordable housing is disappearing, with a recent analysis estimating that nearly one-third of Santa Cruz’s naturally affordable housing was lost last year to speculation and rent increases.[3] Local demand for homelessness services consequently continues to outpace supply, with roughly one shelter bed for every four people experiencing homelessness. The result is a growing gap between the scale of the problem and the resources available to address it.
The PIT data shows what this gap means for people facing housing insecurity. First-time homelessness is increasing, youth homelessness is up, and chronic homelessness remains stubbornly high. 36% of respondents said they could not find available housing. Yet even those who found housing struggled to afford it. Three in four respondents (76%) identified unaffordable rent as a barrier to securing housing, while 70% cited a lack of work or sufficient income. In other words, finding a home does not necessarily mean being able to afford it, and having a job does not necessarily lead to housing in a rental market where fair market rent for a studio is 3.6 times more than what a minimum wage worker can afford.
For people experiencing housing insecurity and the providers who serve them, worsening housing market conditions coincide with reduced funding for services – we are all being asked to do far more with far less. Federal safety nets have been cut just as California has dramatically reduced its own funding for homelessness—from $6.9 billion in 2022–23 to just $1.5 billion in 2025–26. Moreover, funding has shifted towards temporary shelter programs that, without pathways to permanent housing, leave people returning to the streets at the end of their shelter stays. Flexible funding for locally tailored solutions has repeatedly been placed on the chopping block, creating uncertainty for providers trying to maintain and expand the programs their communities rely on.[4]
The 2026 PIT Count should therefore be read neither as a victory nor as a crisis. After several years of PIT Counts showing sustained reductions in homelessness in the County – data that is also evidence in other sources – this year’s increase is a warning about the limits of resilience in a community where individuals and providers are continually being asked to do more with less. Santa Cruz County has so far managed to fight the tide of increasingly severe economic and housing headwinds. But holding the line is not the same as solving the problem.
The question facing our elected leaders and community members is whether we will help people experiencing homelessness find pathways back to housing or allow shrinking resources and worsening housing conditions to push more people into homelessness. As state and local leadership changes with a new election cycle, it is imperative that community members continue telling our elected officials that housing and homelessness require sustained investments so that our community can return to seeing increased housing placements and reductions in homelessness each year.
[1] Santa Cruz has held the title of the nation’s most expensive rental market for four years in a row, and has been among the top five most expensive rental markets since at least 2019.
[2] Santa Cruz County has permitted just 2% of the very low income housing that would be needed to be “on track” with its state-required housing plans, and the City of Watsonville has permitted just 14% of such very low-income housing.
[3] “Naturally” affordable housing, also called unsubsidized affordable housing, is housing that is not income-restricted or rent-restricted, but is still offered to renters at below market-rates that are “naturally affordable.” Naturally affordable housing is the bulk of affordable housing nationally, and makes up 24% of all of California’s multifamily housing.
[4] In the 2025 budget cycle, California provided no new funds for HHAP, the state’s major vehicle for making flexible investments in locally tailored homelessness solutions.