Here’s how Sacramento County’s homelessness count compares to other California counties
The number of people experiencing homelessness in Sacramento County nearly doubled in three years, according to the 2022 point-in-time count.
The point-in-time count is conducted every two years — with the exception of 2021 due to COVID-19 — as required by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. The count is an effort to document every person in a county that is experiencing homelessness on a single night.
Here’s what the report says and how Sacramento compares to other California counties:
Sacramento County
According to the report, there are approximately 9,278 people experiencing homelessness in Sacramento County on any given night. This is up from 5,561 from the 2019 count.
About 2,614 individuals are sheltered, meaning they have access to shelters and transitional housing, and about 6,664 are unsheltered. This is an increase of 67% overall, the report says.
“Given Sacramento County’s population of approximately 1.6 million residents, the estimate of 9,278 people experiencing homelessness each night suggests that approximately 59 out of 10,000 residents in the county experiences homelessness every night,” according to the report.
Compared to other top California counties, Sacramento has one of the highest homelessness counts, with the exception of San Francisco which has 89 per capita homelessness. San Francisco has a population of more than 815,000, in 2021, according to the U.S. Census.
Other California counties per capita
Several California counties have yet to report their 2022 homelessness counts. Here are seven major counties reporting per capita homelessness, according to the Sacramento County report:
- Tying with Sacramento at 59 per capita is Alameda County, with a population of about 1.6 million.
- Santa Clara is at 52 per capita
- San Diego is at 25 per capita
- Kern is at 18 per capita
- Orange is at 18 per capita
- Riverside is at 14 per capita
- San Francisco is at 89
Other point-in-time counts
Several California counties have released their point-in-time counts.
This year, each county conducted the count for multiple days on the week of Feb. 21, 2022. Despite the per capita data, the separate PIT counts from Sacramento and San Francisco show that the former has surpassed the Bay Area county.
San Francisco’s count shows 7,754 people are experiencing homelessness, a decrease from 8,035 in 2019 and 1,524 less than Sacramento.
In Santa Clara, 10,028 people experienced homelessness; Orange County, 5,718; and San Diego, 8,427.