About 4,300 new households experienced homelessness for the first time last year, according to the county's year-end analysis of its 2020-25 Community Plan to End Homelessness. That's a 24 percent jump from the nearly 3,500 households reported in 2022.
Destination: Home CEO Jennifer Loving said one of the reasons homelessness keeps increasing in the county is the area's high rents, combined with the end of pandemic supports, such as rent moratoriums. The average monthly rent in San Jose, which has the largest homeless population in the county, is $2,900, according to recent data from Zillow.
"You are almost entirely going to be rent burdened," Loving told San Jose Spotlight. "You make $2,000 a month, your rent is $1,800 a month and you're trying to live. That's crazy."
The county tallied nearly 10,000 unhoused people in its 2023 point-in-time count, a biennial survey of the region's homeless residents.
The five-year plan to end homelessness is run by the county Office of Supportive Housing's Continuum of Care program and housing nonprofit Destination: Home.
Since 2020, the county has placed more than 13,800 people in permanent housing. Of that number, nearly 4,500 were housed in 2023, according to the report. Nearly a third of those housed were families with children, 14 percent were veterans and 10 percent were seniors 65 and older in 2023.
