What Oʻahu's 2026 Point-in-Time count found

Counts & data · Published 2026-10-19

Aerial view of downtown Honolulu and the harbor, with high-rise towers in front of the green Koʻolau mountains — Downtown Honolulu and the harbor from the air. Photo: ErgoSum88, public domain.

On one night in late January 2026, Oʻahu's homeless count found 4,539 people experiencing homelessness, almost exactly as many as in January 2024. The total barely moved, but what sits beneath it changed a lot: fewer people were sleeping outside, many more were in shelters, and the number of people in families with children rose for a second straight count.

The 2026 count in brief

4,539 people experiencing homelessness on Oʻahu, against 4,494 in 2024.
2,208 unsheltered, down from 2,766 in 2024 (about 20% fewer).
2,331 sheltered, up from 1,728 (about 35% more).
1,334 people in families with children, up 19% from 2024.
802 children, 92 of them unsheltered.

Where the numbers come from

The count is organized by Partners in Care, Oʻahu's Continuum of Care, which publishes a community report and sub-reports on veterans, kūpuna and Native Hawaiians. Sheltered people are counted from shelter records, unsheltered people through an island-wide canvass and survey. Our explainer on how the count works covers the method and its blind spots. Because no street count was carried out in 2025, the relevant year to set 2026 against is 2024.

Three counts side by side

People experiencing homelessness on Oʻahu, Point-in-Time counts
Year	Unsheltered	Sheltered	Total
2023	2,365	1,663	4,028
2024	2,766	1,728	4,494
2026	2,208	2,331	4,539

Two things stand out. First, 2024 had been a bad year: the total rose about 12% from 2023 and the unsheltered count rose 17%, according to reporting on the 2024 report by Hawaiʻi Public Radio. Second, 2026 is the first count in this period in which more people were sheltered than unsheltered. In 2024 roughly 62% of people counted were outside; in 2026 the split was close to half and half.

Why more people were in shelters

A sheltered count rises when there are more beds to fill. Between the two counts, the state opened a series of kauhale, small communal villages of tiny homes with on-site services; by November 2025 the state reported 918 active kauhale beds at 24 sites statewide (see our kauhale explainer). Civil Beat's reporting on the 2026 count cites the kauhale program among the reasons shelter capacity grew.

The City and County of Honolulu, in its May 21, 2026 announcement, pointed to its own programs: the Emergency Services Department's outreach teams (CORE), the police Crisis Intervention Team, a coordination hub it calls the Kōkua Command Center, and use of the state's MH-3 process for involuntary mental health evaluation. The city said at least 52 people had been engaged through MH-3 and 14 had moved into more stable, longer-term care.

It is worth being precise about what the count can show here. A drop in people outside at the same time as a rise in people in shelters is consistent with more people moving indoors. It does not, by itself, prove which program moved whom, and it does not tell us whether those people will reach permanent housing. The state's data on stays and exits from shelter are a better guide to that second question.

Families and children

The most worrying line in the report concerns families. Hawaiʻi Public Radio reported 1,334 people in families with children in 2026, up from 1,123 in 2024 and 933 in 2022, an increase of 43% in four years. The last time the figure was this high was 2018, when it stood at 1,590. Civil Beat reported 802 homeless children (keiki) in the count, 92 of them unsheltered.

Most homeless families on Oʻahu are in shelters rather than on the street, which is why a rise in families can sit alongside a fall in unsheltered homelessness. Families with children are also the group most likely to fall outside the count altogether when they double up with relatives; the school system's figures, covered in our guide to students without stable housing, are much larger for that reason.

Who is counted

Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders remain heavily over-represented. Civil Beat reported that about 43% of the people counted identified as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander alone, against about 10% of the island's population, and 63% when multiracial people are included. Partners in Care publishes a dedicated Native Hawaiian sub-report each count year.

Veterans were one of the clearer improvements: the number of unsheltered veterans fell by 39% from 2024, according to Civil Beat. Partners in Care also publishes a kūpuna sub-report; service providers had said before the count that they expected more older adults without housing.

Caveats to keep in mind

A snapshot. The count records one night. Far more people experience homelessness over a full year.
Missing data. Civil Beat noted that some data points were missing from the prior count, including age information, which limits some year-to-year readings.
Capacity effects. A larger sheltered count partly reflects more beds being open and recorded. When new programs enter the shelter database, they add to the sheltered total even if the people in them were already homeless.
Different dates in coverage. News reports gave the count date as January 25 or 26, 2026; the reports themselves are the reference.

What to watch next

Under HUD's every-other-year rule, the next required street count on Oʻahu falls in January 2028, although a Continuum of Care may count more often; sheltered people must be counted every year. Between counts, the state's annual report to the Legislature, Partners in Care's dashboards and the city's own updates are the main sources. Federal changes matter too: the state reported in January 2026 that HUD had proposed capping permanent housing projects in its Continuum of Care funding round, a proposal that was on hold pending litigation. Rent costs are the backdrop to all of it; our look at rent burden in Honolulu explains why so many households are one emergency away from losing their home.