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At first glance, homelessness appears to be on the decline.
In mid-March, the Richmond-based Homeward, a nonprofit that coordinates the region’s homeless services, released the results of its January point-in-time count, a one-night snapshot of the unhoused community in metro Richmond.
Homeward reported a slight dip from the year before — 618 persons without stable housing compared to 660 in January 2025. Homeward does two point- in-time counts each year, but the January survey is mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It’s widely considered the nation’s temperature check on homelessness.
But it can be misleading, experts say.
“It’s not the best metric for what’s happening in our community,” says Kelly King Horne, chief executive of Homeward. “People think it’s a single number, and that’s the entirety of the homelessness crisis.”
The one-day snapshot misses the bigger picture. In 2025, the Greater Richmond Continuum of Care, a regional planning body that coordinates and doles out federal funding, reported that a total of 8,939 people in the Richmond metropolitan statistical area — which includes the city and the counties of Chesterfield, Henrico, Hanover, Goochland, Powhatan, Charles City and New Kent — received homeless services of some kind, a 44% increase from 2019.
Meanwhile, the growing housing affordability crisis and changes to federal policy — the Trump administration aims to shift HUD away from “Housing First” programs to focus more on mental health and addiction services — has created considerable consternation.
During a panel discussion with Richmond Mayor Danny Avula during his State of the City event on March 25, Karen O’Brien, president and CEO of the homelessness and addiction support nonprofit CARITAS, said the federal funding landscape is shifting rapidly.
“We see the likelihood of less support for permanent supportive housing, which means less places for people to go,” O’Brien said. “And when that happens at the federal level, I think it’s going to get pushed down to the local level — and we need to be prepared for that.”
Indeed, the Richmond region is heavily dependent on federal funding. Roughly $7.9 million, or almost 90% of GRCoC’s current grants from HUD, go toward permanent housing programs, according to Homeward.
That money, however, is now in limbo. In November, the Trump administration announced plans to make deep cuts to federal funding for long-term housing. The cuts have yet to materialize, thanks in part to homelessness advocacy groups pressuring Congress, but the clock is ticking on grants that will soon run out, Horne says.
“It’s just the uncertainty and the inability to plan,” she explains. “Historically, this has been pretty stable funding.”
HUD’s shift toward Housing First policies began in 2009. The idea — to provide stable housing first, without preconditions such as sobriety or employment that are considered a “Treatment First” approach — has been widely credited with reducing homelessness nationally.
In a 2021 review of more than two dozen studies measuring the impact of Housing First versus Treatment First policies, published in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, researchers found that the Housing First approach reduced homelessness by 88% and improved housing stability by 41%.
In Richmond, the number of people served by GRCoC programs has nearly doubled since 2010; there are now 16 nonprofits that provide year-round shelter programs in the region. In fiscal year 2025, there were 422 people receiving rental assistance in GRCoC’s permanent housing programs. Losing that federal funding would be devastating, Horne says.
“Permanent supportive housing … is deeply targeted to people who are the most vulnerable, have the longest histories of homelessness and the highest need for services,” she says. “If a program doesn’t get funded, it would have to shut down. And that means those tenants are facing eviction.”
