Homelessness moves indoors across the Inland Empire as shelter capacity grows

The Citrus Belt Review: San Bernardino County's January 22 point-in-time count found 3,718 people experiencing homelessness, a 3.1% drop from 2025, with 2,448 unsheltered and 1,270 in shelter. The city of San Bernardino drove much of the decline, falling from 1,535 to 1,172 — a 23.6% decrease — with 737 still unsheltered. The city credits capacity: shelter beds have grown from roughly 422 in 2022 to 894 today, paired with scaled-up rapid rehousing, more case managers, and expanded outreach. Redlands extended its own run to a third year, counting 134 people, down about 8% after reductions of 31% and 34% the two prior years. One caveat on the comparison — the county revised its 2025 figure reported to HUD upward to 3,837.

Riverside County has no new 2026 unsheltered number, and that's by design. The county shifted to a biennial cadence — a sheltered-only count in 2024, a full count in 2025 — a change HUD permits so resources spent on the annual street count can be redirected toward housing support. Outreach teams still engage unsheltered residents daily and data collection continues through HMIS, but the next full unsheltered count lands in 2027, not 2026.

The structural story is clearest in Riverside's 2025 full count, conducted January 23. Total homelessness rose 7%, but the increase was almost entirely a move indoors: sheltered numbers jumped from 1,284 in 2023 to 2,012 in 2025 as the county added 11% shelter capacity, while people living on the street fell 19%, from 2,441 to 1,978. The pace is slowing, too — homelessness had climbed 15% in 2022 and 12% in 2023, so a 7% rise marks deceleration. Read alongside San Bernardino, the two counties tell one story from opposite ends: capacity is pulling people off the street faster than the underlying population is growing.