Some of us didn’t believe it when the numbers dropped for the federally-mandated count of homeless people living in Sacramento County in 2024, which showed a staggering 41% decrease in the county’s homeless population over the previous two years.
The Point in Time count, in which hundreds of volunteers fanned out across the county over two nights to count homeless people, supposedly found 3,944 “unsheltered” homeless people living on the streets and another 2,671 living in various shelters.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development commissions the count every two years; locally, it’s carried out by Sacramento Steps Forward, the nonprofit that also coordinates the county’s homeless resources…