Q&A: Housing for Health director predicts an increase in homelessness during this year’s point-in-time count

Next Thursday, teams of volunteers, homelessness workers and service providers will meet in the early hours of the morning to conduct this year’s point-in-time count of unhoused people in Santa Cruz County. Housing for Health director Robert Ratner expects the county’s rate of homelessness to take a jump, following a decrease in 2025.

“In the past year, because of federal funding cuts and state funding cuts, we have fewer people exiting homelessness into housing programs, and we have more people asking for help,” he said.

The count is an annual federally required effort meant to assess the state of homelessness in the county. Last year’s PIT count showed a 20% decrease in the county’s homelessness population, from 1,850 in 2024 to 1,473 in 2025. It was the lowest level ever recorded. Watsonville saw a near 50% decrease in homelessness, while Santa Cruz and Capitola saw increases of 31% and 42%, respectively.

Ratner said that there will be no major changes to the process. Teams will again scour different parts of the county to count the number of unhoused people they see, logging the numbers on a phone app. The following week, volunteers and service providers will conduct surveys with unhoused people to discuss their shelter situations and understand more about their demographics with a focus on unhoused youth

“They’re trying to get new folks who may know where youth are hanging out, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the youth count goes up,” he said.

Lookout spoke with Ratner about his expectations for this year’s count, the factors that could lead to an increase, and how the state and federal governments view each county’s results.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Lookout: Will there be any changes to the process this year?

Robert Ratner: It’s the same general process. The census tracts will be covered by teams of volunteers, folks will use the phone-based app to log the findings, and there’ll be a separate survey that happens the next week. That information is combined with data from our services system to generate the full estimate.

The youth count will be done a little later. They’re recruiting organizations to help do the count and get new folks who may know where youth are hanging out, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the youth count goes up. Last year the youth count went down, which could be because there are fewer youth experiencing homelessness, or it could be because the people who are doing the outreach didn’t know exactly where to go to find people.

Lookout: What does the survey seek to do separately from the count?

Ratner: The count is to get a visual sense of how many unsheltered individuals there are throughout the county. We’re getting approximate numbers like the people in vehicles, how many are in tents, how many are sleeping outside and estimates of age and gender just by visual observation.

That’s followed up with a two-sided survey that asks questions that the federal and state governments are interested in. The survey generally happens the week after the PIT count, and the teams often include people with lived experience of homelessness to help identify and connect with people.

The idea is to do a sampling of folks who are sheltered and unsheltered to get a sense of the demographics of unhoused people and if they are changing. Those are things like age breakdown, disabilities, whether folks have experienced domestic violence, and whether they’re on probation or parole. The survey results are often more interesting to me. Seeing the data trends that show you things like whether folks are older or have more health issues are the sorts of trends I really pay attention to.

Lookout: Do you try to predict the count’s findings?

Ratner: I definitely think about it, and I’ve learned my predictions are often wrong. But what I’ve seen in the past year is because of federal funding cuts and state funding cuts, we have fewer people exiting homelessness into housing programs and we have more people asking for help. That combination, to me, is a sign that [the count] is likely to go up. I haven’t done an academic analysis, but my general hypothesis is when the calls for resources and other housing-related calls are going up, it’s a bad sign and the number of people who are likely to become unhoused also goes up.

The other thing is that our federal funding is in limbo right now and tied up in the courts. There’s risk to our Housing and Urban Development Continuum of Care grant funding, and Santa Cruz County has been increasing the money we get over the past five years from this source. But the Trump administration has proposed radically changing this and not guaranteeing renewals, so we don’t know if the grants are going to get renewed for a lot of our programs. It’s just a perfect storm.

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