Which cities are doing well when it comes to reducing homelessness? Some of that depends on the timeframe we look at and some of it on the specific outcomes we want to measure.
In reality, there are many promising programs in many cities across the nation. Nashville, for example, has some fundamental approaches in place, but struggles with putting these all together in a cohesive vision and strategy.
Let’s set the national stage first. Homelessness increased by 18 percent in the United States between 2023 and 2024 to an all-time high of 771,480 people experiencing homelessness. This happened during a time of large federal investments in COVID funds.
Political pressure has been high as encampments have increased in recent years across the nation with people who lost their housing during COVID due to income loss or with folks moving out of crowded shelters. More than the actual numbers of the federally required one-time count that happens across the nation each January, the more important thing to look at is trends over time.
According to national Point-in-Time (PIT) numbers, homelessness has been increasing since 2017 — after a consistent, albeit moderate, decline over the prior decade. During the first Trump administration, homelessness nationwide increased by 5.3 percent. In comparison, homelessness in Nashville decreased between 2017 and 2020 by 13.7 percent, a time when the community heavily focused on systems building.
When we talk about which cities are doing well, the following are mentioned frequently: Houston, Texas; Salt Lake City, Utah; Austin, Texas; Minneapolis-Hennepin County, Minnesota; Dallas, Texas; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Helsinki, Finland. (The last one is not in the U.S., we know.)
I still recommend looking at these cities, but, as mentioned earlier, before doing so, you should be clear what exactly you want to examine. Some of these cities are doing extremely well with specific populations. For example, Dallas has decreased unsheltered homelessness by 24 percent since 2021. When I looked up their PIT count total, which includes people living in shelters and outdoors, they reduced overall homelessness by 18.6 percent during that time period.
New Orleans, on the other hand, has reduced outdoor homelessness between 2023 and 2024 by 12 percent, but overall homelessness increased by 4.6 percent during that time. The outdoor homelessness numbers depend heavily on whether cities have opened overnight warming shelters during the night of the homeless count. Those people are then counted as “sheltered,” even though the next night they may be back sleeping outdoors.
Houston has built a strong, housing-first oriented system and has been the poster child for years when it comes to decreasing homelessness numbers long-term. Between 2011 and 2024, it reduced homelessness by 61.3 percent, from 8,471 people staying in shelters and outdoors during the 2011 PIT count to 3,280 people during the 2024 PIT Count. But between 2022 and 2024, even Houston saw an increase of 5 percent.
When we want to see how a city is doing overall, we should look at the overall rate of homelessness of a city and the trend over time. When we zoom in on special populations like individuals experiencing chronic homelessness, veterans, youth, or those who specifically sleep outdoors or in encampments, we often detect drastic decreases in one population while others are on the rise. That can occur as investments of resources shift from one population to another.
Effective cities usually take a balanced approach that focuses on moving people from all populations to permanent housing as quickly as possible with the right support services attached. This includes addressing the low-income housing supply needs in a community.
Effective cities also pay attention to preventing homelessness to begin with, and keeping people housed long-term. While this seems a no-brainer, it is hard to do as the homelessness system has to figure out a way to improve coordination across different systems like housing, healthcare, criminal justice, education, etc. to develop an upstream approach. Santa Clara County, for example, has developed a prevention model other cities are looking at that offers rent assistance and eviction prevention to keep people in housing.
Helsinki, Finland, has been in the news a lot about practically ending homelessness by building housing and investing in the needed support services. In years past, the same went for Salt Lake City, Utah, which 10 years ago saw stark reductions in chronic homelessness after heavily investing in permanent supportive housing. Since then, however, glowing reviews have dried up: once the special focus on building more supportive housing slowed down, Salt Lake’s overall homelessness began climb, increasing by 14.7 percent between 2022 and 2025. Even Helsinki is starting to see the effects of a conservative government that is easing away from their Housing First approach.
I looked through data for about 50 mid- to larger-sized cities across the nation to see if I could find any that had been able to decrease homelessness between 2022 and 2024, in the aftermath of COVID when federal dollars were still available. This was also a time when cities like Nashville shifted their resources to close down encampments and move people indoors quickly. This works well for cities that have an effective, housing-oriented system in place and invest in the needed services to keep people permanently housed.
For cities like Nashville that focus heavily on temporary housing where people then linger for up to a year, the homelessness numbers did not improve much, if at all.
Here are the cities that I found have been able to reduce homelessness between 2022 and 2024 (in alphabetical order):
- Austin, Texas -5.8 percent
- Chattanooga, Tenn. -71.3 percent
- Cincinnati, Ohio -4.6 percent
- Colorado Springs, Colo. -18.5 percent
- Dallas, Texas -3.8 percent
- Durham, N.C. -11.8 percent
- Knoxville, Tenn. -23.7 percent
- Memphis, Tenn. -25.7 percent
- Raleigh, N.C. -39.9 percent
- Wichita, Kan. -zero percent
In comparison, Nashville has seen a 9.3 percent increase, which is interesting when looking at the trends in the other major Tennessee cities. I examined whether other cities may have simply shipped their folks across the state to Nashville, but then the actual numbers would likely be even higher than they are.
We requested the PIT count numbers for 2025 to see if the recent federal investments in staffing and services to close local encampments has made a difference over the past year, but the numbers were not yet available at press time.
In March, representatives from Austin, Texas, spoke to the Metro Council’s Public Health and Safety Committee about their approach to homelessness. Austin is an interesting city and is considered a peer city to Nashville. While their PIT Count numbers have decreased, they did not conduct a separate outdoor count either in 2022 or in 2024.
The federal government requires shelter counts on an annual basis and outdoor counts every two years. If cities choose to only do a shelter count, they add the prior year’s outdoor count to the overall homelessness numbers. Thus, outdoor numbers may be outdated.
The following are some of the highlights from the Austin presentation, which can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwEkg2ixNKU&t=3s:
- Austin’s permanent supportive housing strategy requires investments in capital projects, comprehensive wraparound services, and rental assistance.
- Dollars for capital projects come from the Housing Department of the City of Austin and Travis County.
- Dollars for wraparound services are from the City of Austin’s Homeless Strategy Office.
- Rental subsidies are either funded through the voucher program of the Housing Authority of the City of Austin, or through the City of Austin’s Housing Department, which created its own local voucher program. (A similar local rental assistance plan for Nashville was presented in 2018 to the Barry administration but was not further pursued as public transit was the top priority back then).
- Austin currently has 480 permanent supportive housing units in operation and anticipates 338 units to open in 2025 and 527 additional units to come on board in 2026.
- The total of 1,345 units the City of Austin invested in represent $122.5 million in gap financing provided by the City of Austin.
- The City of Austin has worked since 2020/2021 to develop these new permanent supportive housing projects.
- Travis County, which is where the City of Austin is located, also invested $115 million in ARPA funds for the development of permanent supportive housing. (The online presentation breaks down more details about the funding sources).
- The City of Austin also adjusted policy to be able to provide public land, tax exemptions, permit fee waivers, and an expedited permit review process, to support the creation of more permanent supportive housing units.
- Austin invests $4 million per year to fund 374 local housing vouchers at seven projects (three of which are currently in operation). The $4 million stems from the Housing Trust Fund, which in turn is funded through property taxes from properties that were formerly publicly owned and through a Downtown density bonus program.
When we shift to looking at Indianapolis, while there was a slight decrease since 2022, city leaders are not happy with the progress made. Indianapolis set a goal to end homelessness by 2023. To do so, it outlined the development of about 220 units of permanent supportive housing per year, which has not happened.
The Indianapolis plan relied heavily on a federal funding source called the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. With COVID interrupting supply chains, which increased construction costs, the complicated financing of low-income housing units has become even more complex.
Cities do well to learn from increased local investments and designated funds to develop more permanent supportive housing, rather than rely solely on the more established LIHTC program.
Chattanooga has been praised as a national example. Their strategy is based on a comprehensive approach that includes a focus on providing housing, eviction prevention by providing local rental assistance, and collaboration among service providers who focus on the populations they are specialized in serving. Understanding which funding sources serve what vulnerable subpopulations is another key to their successful strategy.
However, even cities like Chattanooga remain vulnerable. Ultimately, the homelessness sector is limited in what I can do without fixing other systems including the housing and health care sectors. Without reducing the inflow, cities across the nation will continue to see increases in homelessness.
The solution, in the present federal economic climate, lies in investing more local funding in strategic ways. Nashville, as a city, needs a clear blueprint that outlines how city dollars will be invested to stem the inflow and increase the outflow of people experiencing a housing crisis. This will allow for honest and transparent conversation across the community and create more accountability in how city leaders intend to stem the coming tide.