The number of available shelter beds for Houston’s unhoused residents is at the lowest level in at least two decades, according to data from the federal Housing Inventory Count.
According to an article by John Brannen and Jacob Carpenter in the Kinder Institute for Urban Research’s Urban Edge, “About 2,600 temporary beds were available in Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties as of January, a 13% decline from early 2024, when local providers tallied about 3,000 beds.”
At the same time, the number of unsheltered individuals in the region rose from 1,100 to nearly 1,300. “It is a setback for a region that had been successful in curbing homelessness in recent years; the unsheltered population had dropped for two consecutive years after hovering around 1,500 for several years.”…