Orange County officials are touting a significant drop in homelessness, but a new investigation by Voice of OC raises a pointed question: did the numbers improve, or did the county just move people from the streets into cells?

According to Voice of OC, the county’s incarceration rate of homeless residents jumped more than 40% between 2022 and 2025. In 2022, sheriffs recorded 7,025 bookings of people identifying as homeless. By 2025, that number hit 9,857. Yet when county leaders conducted their biannual Point in Time count earlier this year, jails weren’t included, a gap that raises serious questions about the validity of the reported 13% decline.

“When we’re under investing in affordable housing and over investing in law enforcement … I don’t think it’s surprising that the number of unhoused people within our jail population has surged,” Eve Garrow, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU, told Voice of OC.

California reported 187,084 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2024, representing about 28% of the nation’s homeless population, according to a January 2025 fact sheet from the California State Senate Office of Research that cites federal point-in-time data. The report notes California also had the nation’s highest share of unsheltered homeless residents, with about 66% living outdoors or in places not meant for habitation.

The federal government’s latest point-in-time count found about 771,000 people experiencing homelessness nationwide on a single night in January 2024, including roughly 187,000 in California, the highest totals since federal tracking began in 2007. By comparison, HUD’s long‑running data series shows that national homelessness in 2007 was roughly one‑fifth lower than today and has climbed about 19% since then, while California’s homeless population has risen even more sharply over the same period, underscoring how much larger the crisis is now than it was around the turn of the century.

California has directed tens of billions of dollars toward homelessness over the past five years, including initiatives like Project Roomkey and Homekey that convert hotels, motels and other properties into housing and expand shelter capacity statewide. The Newsom administration has also created regional homelessness plans, launched a Housing and Homeless Accountability Unit to enforce local compliance, and linked new housing investments with mental health and substance use treatment through programs such as CARE Courts and implementation of Proposition 1.

Further reading

For more information on the issue of homelessness, visit:

• New homelessness data: How does California compare to the rest of the country? (CalMatters)
• State of Homelessness: 2025 Edition (National Alliance to End Homelessness)