SACRAMENTO, California — California's unsheltered homelessness has fallen for the second year in a row, according to preliminary 2026 Point-in-Time count results announced by Governor Gavin Newsom's office on Wednesday, October 28, 2026. Across the 37 local reporting regions — called Continuums of Care — that conducted a new unsheltered count this year, unsheltered homelessness declined approximately 7.3% against their most recent prior counts, and the state says the estimated unsheltered population is now slightly below its 2019 level, when Newsom took office.
Source: Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, gov.ca.gov, Oct. 28, 2026
The figures are preliminary and state-compiled: California is publishing its own 2026 estimates before the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) releases the national 2026 Point-in-Time findings, which will be the federal check on these numbers. That caution matters, and it is built into the state's own release — but the direction of the numbers is corroborated by the city and county counts underneath them, including sharp drops reported this year in San Francisco, Oakland and San Joaquin County, in California's Central Valley.
The numbers, in full
The 37 regions reporting new counts accounted for nearly 90% of California's reported unsheltered population in 2025, according to the governor's office. Within those regions, unsheltered homelessness fell 7.3% compared with their most recent prior counts, conducted in 2024 or 2025. Across all 44 regions statewide — the estimate combines the 37 new counts with the last reported counts from the seven regions that did not recount this year, following HUD's own practice — preliminary estimates show unsheltered homelessness down 6.5% and total homelessness down 3.4% compared with reported 2025 figures.
Over the two years from 2024 to 2026, the state's preliminary estimates show unsheltered homelessness falling 12.8% and total homelessness declining 6%. The governor's office says the 2026 estimates mark the first back-to-back annual declines in both unsheltered and total homelessness since 2013–14, and that the numerical declines in 2025 and 2026 are the two largest since 2009. “California is proving that homelessness is not inevitable,” Newsom said in the release. “We're making progress because we're building housing, expanding treatment and shelter, and holding ourselves and local governments accountable. We're not backing down — and we're not done.”
How California compares with the rest of the United States
The latest completed federal comparison is the HUD-confirmed 2025 data. Those figures show California's unsheltered homelessness declined 6.77% in 2025, compared with a 2.88% decline nationwide — more than twice the national rate — and that California's numerical decline was the largest of any state, more than offsetting a slight increase across the rest of the country combined, according to the state. Over the longer term, from 2019 to 2025, unsheltered homelessness surged 26% nationwide while California's increase was 6.6% — one-quarter of the national rate, outperforming 44 other states on that measure, the release says. The state also notes that federal officials confirmed California's 2025 reductions earlier this year, months after the federal government would normally announce them.
What the local counts underneath show — San Francisco, Oakland, the Central Valley
The statewide claim rests on local counts, and several of the biggest have already been published separately. San Francisco's official preliminary 2026 Point-in-Time results show overall homelessness down 4% between 2024 and 2026, from 8,323 people to 7,973, with unsheltered homelessness down 22% — from 4,354 people to 3,400, the lowest level recorded there since 2011 — and 57% of people experiencing homelessness now sheltered, the highest sheltered rate the city has recorded. San Francisco's veteran homelessness fell 44%, from 585 veterans in 2024 to 327 in 2026, although family homelessness rose 15% in the same count. In Oakland, Alameda County's 2026 count found overall homelessness down 19.6% since 2024 and unsheltered homelessness down 27%, from 3,659 people to 2,695. In the Central Valley, San Joaquin County — home to Stockton and a large Punjabi community — saw its overall homeless population fall by nearly a third since 2024, with unsheltered homelessness cut nearly in half, according to reporting on the county counts.
Source: City and County of San Francisco, 2026 Point-in-Time Count preliminary results, sf.gov
Homeless advocates quoted in reporting on this year's county counts warn that intensified encampment sweeps and citations for illegal camping can scatter unhoused residents and make them harder to locate — and therefore harder to count — even if they have not actually found housing. County leaders also worry the gains may not hold if federal cuts to Medi-Cal and other social services land. “We've made progress,” said Jonathan Russell, director of Alameda County Health's housing and homelessness services, which reported a 13% decline against 2024, “and there are real threats, real peril.” — via the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle's reporting on the 2026 county counts
What the state says drove the drop
The administration credits a stack of programs built over several years. Voters approved Proposition 1 in 2024, a behavioural-health bond the state estimates will create at least 6,800 residential treatment beds and 26,700 outpatient treatment slots when fully awarded. California updated its conservatorship laws for the first time in 50 years, created the CARE Court system — court-administered care plans of up to 24 months for people with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, often alongside substance-use challenges — and signed broad housing reforms, including CEQA changes, intended to speed building. A $77 million investment from the state's cap-and-invest program went toward Los Angeles's Jordan Downs project, described as the largest public-housing redevelopment in that region. On encampments, the governor's SAFE Task Force has worked in the state's 10 largest cities — including Sacramento and Fresno — and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) says it has removed more than 19,000 encampments on state rights-of-way since 2021, collecting approximately 354,000 cubic yards of litter and debris.
Why this matters for Punjabi and diaspora readers in California
California is home to the largest Punjabi population in the United States, concentrated in exactly the places these counts cover — Sacramento, Fresno, Stockton and San Joaquin County, Bakersfield and the wider Central Valley, alongside the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Unsheltered homelessness in California is not an abstract statistic for those communities: encampments sit along the same highway corridors — Highway 99, Interstate 5 — that Valley truck drivers run daily, and the housing-cost pressure that pushes people into vehicles and tents in California is the same pressure facing newcomer families paying Valley rents on trucking, farming and warehouse wages. A measured, two-year decline — if the federal numbers confirm it — would be the first sustained reversal these communities have seen in more than a decade. The family-homelessness increase in San Francisco's count is the counter-signal to watch: it rose even as the headline numbers fell.
What happens next
Three things will test this story. First, HUD's national 2026 Point-in-Time release: the federal government will publish its own figures, and California's preliminary percentages will either be confirmed or adjusted — last year's state numbers were ultimately confirmed by federal officials, the governor's office notes, but months late. Second, the Proposition 1 build-out: the promised treatment beds and outpatient slots are awarded over time, and their delivery pace will decide whether the behavioural-health side of the strategy is real on the ground. Third, the money: county officials are already warning that federal cuts to health and social programs could push people back onto the street faster than new housing pulls them off it. For now, the accurate summary is the state's own word — preliminary — attached to the strongest two-year improvement California has recorded since 2009.