Counts & data

Hawaiʻi in the national homelessness count: reading the federal figures

Counts & data · Published 2026-10-20

Every December or so, the federal government publishes its national snapshot of homelessness, and Hawaiʻi usually appears near the top of the table of rates per resident. In the 2024 report it was at the very top. The headline is accurate, but the story behind it, including the effect of the Maui wildfires, is more complicated than a single ranking suggests.

The national report in brief

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) compiles every Continuum of Care's Point-in-Time count into its Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress, known as the AHAR. The 2024 edition, released in December 2024, counted 771,480 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2024, up from 653,104 a year earlier, an 18% increase and the highest figure on record. Coverage of the report noted that the number of children experiencing homelessness rose by about a third, and that veterans were the one major group to decline.

The report's state tables convert counts into rates. According to America's Health Rankings, which republishes the AHAR data, Hawaiʻi's 2024 rate was 80.5 people per 10,000 residents, the highest of any state; Mississippi had the lowest, at 3.5.

The Maui factor

Hawaiʻi's 2024 federal total was 11,637 people, up 87% from 6,223 in 2023, as Civil Beat reported when the report came out. The jump is closely tied to the August 2023 wildfires in Lahaina and Kula, which displaced thousands of Maui residents. Many were living in hotel rooms and other non-congregate shelter paid for through the disaster response on the night of the January 2024 count.

The State of Hawaiʻi handles those households differently in its own reporting. Its January 2026 report to the Legislature uses a statewide 2024 total of 6,392 people and explains that including the Maui non-congregate shelter programs would add 2,328 households, or 5,245 people. Both numbers are legitimate; they answer different questions. The federal figure counts everyone in shelter funded for homeless or displaced people that night. The state figure isolates homelessness that is not a direct result of the disaster.

The longer trend: lower than the 2016 peak

Looking past 2024, the state's figures show a decade of mixed progress. According to the state report, homelessness in Hawaiʻi rose steadily after the 2008 recession and peaked in 2016 at about 7,921 people. By 2024 the statewide total had fallen by 1,592, or 19%, from that peak. The report highlights large reductions in specific groups since 2016:

• family households experiencing homelessness down 49%, a reduction of 396 families;
• veterans down 58%, a reduction of 387 people;
• chronically homeless individuals down 10%, a reduction of 187 people;
• unsheltered homelessness down 6%, a reduction of 266 people.

The same report flags two warning signs. Unsheltered homelessness has been creeping up since 2019, and by 2024 about 63% of people counted statewide, or 4,042 individuals, were unsheltered. The number of chronically homeless people has also risen each year since 2022, and the state cautions that this status is often underreported. On Oʻahu, family homelessness, which had fallen sharply, has since climbed again; our summary of the 2026 Oʻahu count shows people in families up 43% from 2022.

Why Hawaiʻi's rate is high

A rate per 10,000 residents depends on two things: how many people are homeless, and how many people live in the state. Hawaiʻi's population is small, so a few thousand people make a large rate. But the underlying causes are real and well documented:

• Housing costs. Honolulu's median gross rent in the 2019–2023 Census estimates was $2,054 a month, and nearly half of renters paid 35% or more of their income on rent; see rent burden in Honolulu.
• Limited supply. Land, construction and permitting constraints have kept new housing scarce for decades, a problem the governor's emergency housing proclamations tried to address (see our explainer).
• Climate. Mild weather makes it physically possible to survive outdoors year-round, which partly explains why so many people are unsheltered rather than doubled up or in shelters.
• Disaster displacement. The Maui fires added a large, temporary group to the 2024 count.

Rates versus totals

Rankings by rate and rankings by total tell different stories. States with very large populations, such as California and New York, have far more people experiencing homelessness in absolute terms, while small states with high housing costs, including Hawaiʻi and Vermont, can show higher rates. Neither measure is wrong. Rates are useful for gauging how widespread homelessness is in a community; totals are what determine how many beds, case managers and housing units are needed.

How to use the federal data

1. Check the year and what it includes. The 2024 Hawaiʻi figure includes disaster shelter; later years may not, which will make the state look as if homelessness fell sharply even if non-disaster homelessness did not change.
2. Go to the local report for detail. The AHAR is built from local counts. For Oʻahu, Partners in Care publishes the full community report and sub-reports.
3. Remember the method. Every figure in the AHAR is a one-night count with the limits described in our method explainer.

What comes next

The state's report also describes a shift in federal policy: in late 2025 HUD signalled that it would move away from prioritizing permanent housing in its homelessness grants and proposed capping permanent housing projects, a change that was on hold pending litigation when the state reported. Because most of Hawaiʻi's federal homelessness money flows through those grants, changes in HUD's rules may matter as much for future counts as anything decided in Honolulu.

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