How many Oregon kids are homeless? It depends who’s counting

Published 1:14 pm Monday, August 4, 2025

By Lillian Mongeau Hughes

The Oregonian

Figuring out exactly how many Oregon children are homeless is tricky. Depending on the data source, Oregon has anywhere from about 2,600 homeless children, according to a biannual federally mandated count, to nearly 10 times that many – about 23,700, according to the state department of education.
That’s a vast gap that begs the question of why two ways of counting the same thing could possibly be so far apart. The short, though not completely satisfying answer is that the two tallies show pretty different things.
“This is a question that has been asked so many times,” said Sean Suib, executive director of New Avenues for Youth, a homeless services organization focused on children. “And the answer is a bit elusive.”
What’s clear, no matter the measure, is that Oregon does not do well in national rankings when it comes to youth homelessness.
“We’re always in the shame club,” Suib said.
The smaller estimate of 2,600 children is a snapshot of who was homeless on one night in January 2023. It comes from a federally mandated census of homeless people, called a point-in-time count, that is conducted every other year to secure funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The statewide 2025 numbers should be available soon, but they likely won’t record a 10x jump.
Suib said that the point-in-time count figure tends to include children in the most severe situations of homelessness, like living out of a car or staying in a shelter.
But it only records people who are homeless on one night in January. And people approached by surveyors doing the counting can also decline to participate. For these reasons, it is a known undercount of the annual number of homeless people and it misses anyone who is not actively receiving services or living outside.
The second way to measure youth homelessness is to count students. The larger figure, 23,700, comes from the Oregon Department of Education’s homeless student data, which is collected to secure federal McKinney-Vento funding from the U.S. Department of Education. This count uses a broader definition of homeless, like staying on a friend’s couch or moving very frequently due to consistent trouble making rent. It also counts anyone of school age, including 18-year-olds and a handful of 19- and 20-year-olds.
Children identified by their school districts as having unstable housing are given the right to stay at their original school, even if their address changes during the school year, along with additional academic and social supports.
School districts are actively looking to identify students with unstable housing, Suib said, which makes the count less subject to the issues of young people hiding from officials. The broader definition, and the fact that the count includes anyone identified as homeless at any point in the year instead of on a single night, also contribute to the higher numbers, he said.
It’s worth noting that when the McKinney-Vento data is more closely parsed certain groups do get a little closer to the point-in-time numbers. For example, 3,166 Oregon students were recorded as living unsheltered at some point during the 2021-22 school year. That is not far off the January 2023 point-in-time count figure for unsheltered families with children, which was 3,952 total people in those families.

By any measure, Oregon does poorly

Research shows that one of the biggest risk factors for becoming homeless as an adult is being homeless as a child. Among other issues, unstable housing tends to disrupt educational attainment and can cause lasting trauma.
That’s bad news for Oregon, which has among the highest rates of homeless children in the country, according to information drawn from both data sets.
Oregon had the nation’s eighth highest rate of homeless students, about 3.3% in the 2021-22 school year, among all U.S. states and the District of Columbia, according to the most recently available federal data. National McKinney-Vento data also shows that 70% of homeless Oregon students were chronically absent that year, the fourth highest rate in the country.
And according to national point-in-time count data from 2023, the state also had the highest rate of unsheltered families with children and was tied for the second highest rate of unsheltered children on their own, groups that are arguably among the most vulnerable. On the upside, Oregon also saw the fifth largest decrease in the number of families with children who were homeless from 2007 to 2024.
Knowing exactly how many young people are homeless doesn’t change the basics of what they need, Suib said. Research shows kids need stable, safe adults, consistent school placements and a roof over their heads. Things like job training for older kids and preschool for younger ones also make a difference.
But while the numbers may not dictate what should be done to help kids, they do help clarify how much funding governments need to provide that help.
Getting a more accurate count while still following the federal rules for how to conduct the existing surveys could be tricky. But Suib said more reliable data on homeless children and families would help secure needed resources.
“Getting better numbers so that advocates can fight for the resources needed to prevent late state adult homelessness really matters,” Suib said. “Counting means funding and funding means services and support.”
Oregon has added a significant amount of dedicated funding for homeless young people in recent years. Both last biennium and this one saw about $19 million set aside for youth homelessness, which includes young people up to age 24. It’s not as much as advocates wanted – a bill to secure more than double that amount and had the backing of Gov. Tina Kotek died in committee – but Suib acknowledged the progress.
New statewide numbers – from the January 2025 point-in-time count and the 2024-25 school year – will be available this fall. The gap between the two likely won’t close significantly.
In the end, Suib said, he’s not sure it matters that the numbers are so different as long as it’s clear what each one is describing.
“We look at these two incredibly different counts and we think they’re telling us the same thing and they’re not,” he said. “But they are both important measures.”