Each month Fatima Johnson, Brightlane’s Community Engagement & Education Strategist, will be sharing some educational information and resources as we continue to learn together. This month she is helping us learn more about the state of homelessness 25 years later.
Brightlane Learning was founded as School on Wheels twenty-five years ago, when the public image of homelessness was a single adult on a city sidewalk. Since then, public understanding of homelessness has grown to include families and rural communities, and the approach has shifted from tackling an individual crisis to addressing a housing affordability crisis.
Nationally, HUD’s count fell from 647,258 in 2007 to a low of 549,928 in 2016 and then climbed to 771,480 in 2024 before easing slightly to 745,652 in 2025, according to the Congressional Research Service. Data published by the National Alliance to End Homelessness states that the 2024 count alone included nearly 150,000 children, up 33% in a single year. Meanwhile, veteran homelessness has fallen 55% since 2009, proof that sustained investment works. In schools, the number of homeless students nationally grew from roughly 1.3 million in the early 2010s to over 1.5 million by 2017-18, according to the National Center for Homeless Education.
CHIP Indy reported that Indianapolis’s 2026 Point-In-Time count held nearly flat, reporting 1,821 people experiencing homelessness on a single night, though unsheltered homelessness dropped 18% thanks to local efforts like Streets to Home. However, according to the Indiana Business Journal, 2025 saw chronic homelessness rise 24% and child homelessness rise 14%. Statewide, more than 22,000 K-12 students are experiencing homelessness, and the academic toll is steep, they graduate at 82.8% versus 90.2% for all students and pass early literacy exams at 56.1% versus 82.5% according to the Indiana Department of Education.
What’s changed since 2001: steep increases in rent prices and housing shortages now drive most homelessness, families and children make up a much bigger share of the unhoused population, shelter capacity has grown but is still inadequate, and public-sleeping laws have expanded, criminalizing what is fundamentally an economic problem
The throughline across 25 years of data is the same everywhere you look; this is a housing affordability crisis first. We have better data and more advocates than a generation ago, but what’s missing is affordable housing and policy that matches the scale of the need.
Below are resources to learn more and gain a broader understanding of the current state of homelessness across the country and in Indiana.
Read:
- State of Homelessness: 2025 Edition
- Out of Reach 2026: Indiana’s housing affordability crisis now threatens community, workforce, and economic growth
- A Brief History of Homelessness in the U.S.
- There Is No Place For Us by Brian Goldstone