Homelessness in Wake County is up 27 percent over last year, according to preliminary data from the 2025 point-in-time (PIT) count. Much of that increase comes from a rise in unsheltered homelessness.
In January, more than 100 volunteers fanned out across the county’s shelters and encampments to count and interview unhoused people as part of an annual effort to produce data for the Wake Continuum of Care and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
The volunteers counted 1,258 people, up from 992 in 2024. Of those, 287 were living unsheltered, more than twice as many as last year, and 320, or about a quarter, were chronically homeless.
Of the people counted, 1,009 were adults, and 63 percent were Black, African American, or African—much higher than the proportion of the Wake County population overall. The complete data breakdown is available here.
The PIT count is widely understood to undercount the actual rate of homelessness. It doesn’t cover people who are couch-surfing, living in hotels, get overlooked by the volunteers, or decline to participate. Despite those gaps, this year’s count was Wake’s most accurate yet, according to Eileen Rosa, the Lead Agency Director for the county’s Continuum of Care.
“The increase [in homelessness] is primarily driven by an improved methodology,” Rosa says. “It marks a new season of improved care coordination in the [Continuum of Care].”
This year’s PIT count had a bigger group of volunteers (145 compared to about 36 in 2024) who were able to cover more ground. They also used a new app that made it easier to record information as they went. Plus, the count took place on a very cold night when the county’s emergency White Flag shelters were open to people who might have otherwise been living unsheltered.
Even though the PIT count is only a one-day snapshot, Rosa says it does help the county to better understand the population it’s serving and measure the impact of its work.
“It’s informing our triage services and crisis services for immediate homelessness—our shelters, our street outreach capacity—and then long term, it helps us understand the flow through our system so that we can plan for what permanent housing resources we need,” she says.
The PIT count is a federally-mandated program, and the data Wake County reports each year informs how much money it receives from HUD for homelessness services.
The Trump administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 26 recommends $532 million in cuts to homeless assistance programs, which last year received about $4 billion in federal funding. Rosa says “we don’t really have a good picture yet,” of how those proposed cuts will impact the Wake Continuum of Care.
Chloe Courtney Bohl is a Report for America corps member. Follow her on Bluesky or reach her at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].