Pasadena Homeless Population Holds Nearly Flat as Fewer Sleep Outside

The number of people experiencing homelessness in Pasadena barely changed at the beginning of year, but for the first time in five years, fewer of them were sleeping outside, according to the city’s 2026 Point-in-Time Homeless Count, released Monday.

Volunteers counted 577 people on the night of January 21, four fewer than at the start of 2025.

But beneath that essentially unchanged total were what a report prepared forf Monday’s city council meeting called notable shifts: unsheltered homelessness fell 6 percent, while the sheltered population reached a 10-year high — even as the public funding behind the city’s homeless response is set to shrink.

The 322 people found in unsheltered locations were down from 342 a year earlier, the first such decline in five years, according to the results. Most were on streets and sidewalks, 175 of them, or living in vehicles, 37. The figures reflect a single night, the count notes.

The sheltered side moved the other way, rising 7 percent. The 255 people in shelters, transitional housing and voucher-paid motels marked a 10-year high, the count reported, with the motel figure doubling since 2024. Families made up 47 percent of the sheltered population. Every unsheltered person counted was a single adult, and no families with minor children were found without shelter. Still, families with minor children do experience unsheltered homelessness in Pasadena, in far lower numbers than single adults; six were counted unsheltered in 2025.

The people sleeping outside were, by and large, Pasadena’s own. More than half of those surveyed — 57 percent — were last housed in the city, where they had lived an average of 21 years before losing their homes, the count found. Another 19 percent reported ties through family, friends or work.

The Eaton Fire still registers in the numbers. Among unsheltered people surveyed, 29 percent reported being affected by the January 2025 fire, and 9 percent said it was the reason they lost their housing, according to the count.

Pasadena has taken the federally required tally every January since 1992, when it became the first California city to run its own dedicated count, and uses the figures to direct local and federal homeless-services dollars.

Those dollars are tightening. The report says anticipated reductions in county-administered services — part of an $843 million county homelessness plan adopted in February that cut roughly $200 million from programs, some of which operate in Pasadena — will likely impact Pasadena’s homeless response system.

The city’s homeless-services funding is expected to fall across federal, state and county sources, the report says, further straining the local system.