Wake County’s homeless population is growing. More than 150 are children.
Wake County’s official homeless population grew nearly 27% over last year.
That’s 1,258 people who slept in cars, tents, shelters and on the streets, counted by volunteers on a cold January night.
The numbers show a bigger homeless population but also reflect a more thorough count.
“This year’s count is the most accurate we’ve ever had, thanks to the improvements we made in data collection and volunteer engagement,” Wake County Commissioner Safiyah Jackson said in a news release.“We see firsthand the challenges that individuals experiencing homelessness face, and we’re more committed than ever to ensuring homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring.”
Nearly 150 volunteers participated in the count, up from a few dozen in 2024. This helped cover more of the county in this year’s count. The county also used a new app for surveying that provided more accurate data from residents.
Homeless in Wake County
The federal government requires a point-in-time count each year, but it often doesn’t fully capture the number of people who are homeless in a given area.
The count doesn’t include people spending the night on a family member’s couch or a person who scraped enough money together for a night in a low-rent hotel.
Of the Wake County adults counted, 61% were men and 37% were women. Three transgender and one non-binary person were counted.
About 25%, or 320, of the people counted were chronically homeless, meaning they had a “disabling condition” and had been homeless for 12 consecutive months or for a total of a year over the last three years.
More than 60 veterans were reported homeless.
While African Americans make up 20% of Wake County’s population, the count found 63% of those counted were African American.
The average age of the adults was 45, but there also were 156 children under the age of 17 who were counted.
One child, with no family, was counted in the shelter.
This story was originally published May 6, 2025 at 11:04 AM.
