In this statement, Funders Together for Housing Justice reflects on the newly released 2025 Point-in-Time (PIT) count and what it reveals about the state of homelessness in the United States. While the data show a modest decline in homelessness nationally, the organization cautions against treating the PIT count as a complete measure of housing instability. Instead, Funders Together argues that the findings reinforce a broader lesson: investments in housing, prevention, and support services work, and philanthropy has an important role to play in expanding those solutions rather than retreating from them.

The recently released 2025 Point-in-Time (PIT) count found a modest decline in homelessness nationally. While the count has significant limitations, any reduction is meaningful. Behind these numbers are individuals, families, and young people who were able to secure stable housing, avoid homelessness, or exit it more quickly because resources were available when they needed them. 

This progress did not happen by accident. Communities across the country have spent years expanding housing resources, strengthening homelessness response systems, investing in prevention and rapid rehousing, and building partnerships that connect people to the services they need. 

The data indicates that these investments are having an impact. At the same time, this is a moment to balance optimism with perspective as we consider the broader landscape.

The PIT count remains a limited snapshot of homelessness on a single night and is widely understood to undercount the true scale of housing instability in America. By design, the count captures only people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January and misses many people living in unstable or precarious situations, including those who are couch-surfing, sleeping in vehicles, doubling up with family or friends, or cycling between temporary arrangements.

As a result, the PIT count should not be understood as a complete picture of homelessness in the United States. Rather, it is one tool among many that helps us understand broad trends while reminding us that housing instability extends far beyond what any annual count can measure.

At the very moment communities are demonstrating that housing investments reduce homelessness, policymakers are advancing proposals that would move us in the opposite direction. Federal housing resources face continued threats, while communities increasingly respond to homelessness through criminalization, surveillance, and enforcement, rather than housing and care.

The lesson of the 2025 PIT count is not that homelessness has been solved. It is that we already know what works. The question is whether we have the political will and collective commitment to expand those solutions rather than retreat from them.

The modest decline reflected in the 2025 PIT count was achieved despite decades of underinvestment in affordable housing and amid growing economic instability. Imagine what would be possible if communities had the resources they actually need.

Philanthropy has an important role to play to fund immediate responses to homelessness while investing in the housing justice strategies that prevent it. It means supporting organizers, advocates, tenants, and people with lived expertise. It means resisting narratives that frame punishment as a solution and instead advancing policies rooted in housing, dignity, and self-determination. It means rejecting our relationship to housing as a commodity rather than a human right. 

We should not respond to this progress by pulling back. We should respond by asking what it would take to achieve far more.

For funders looking to better understand the PIT count, homelessness data, or the policy and funding landscape shaping these trends, Funders Together for Housing Justice is available to provide additional context, talking points, and technical assistance. We welcome the opportunity to support your learning, strategy, and grantmaking.