Homelessness in El Paso County grew between 2024 and 2025 at a rate faster than any other part of Colorado, according to a new statewide report released last week.

The second annual, industry-produced Colorado’s State of Homelessness Report 2025 shows 7,078 people countywide were counted as homeless at some point last year.

That’s a 4.3% jump from the first survey compiled in 2024 by the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, the administrator for the Colorado Homeless Management Information System, when 6,787 people in El Paso County were considered homeless.

In fact, the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care is the only one of the state’s four Continuums of Care – geographically based and government-funded agencies that coordinate housing and services for local homeless people – to see its homeless population increase year-over-year.

Whether it’s an actual increase in numbers or reflective of better efforts to count people who are traditionally uncounted, the apparent population jump makes sense, said Kristy Milligan, CEO of Westside CARES, a consortium of churches and other faith-based institutions that provide assistance.

“Over the last 12 months, the Pikes Peak region has seen a dwindling of tenant-based vouchers, a loss of prevention resources, a loss of other safety-net supports and an increase in enforcement,” she said. “These enforcement efforts entangle people in the criminal justice system, and that entanglement makes it even harder for them to find housing.”

As a result, small organizations like Westside CARES have had dramatic increases for requests to help people avoid eviction or escape homelessness, she said.

In metro Denver, 35,601 people were homeless last year, compared with 36,065 in 2024, a drop of 1.3%, according to the report. The homeless population also fell by 1.3% in Northern Colorado’s coverage area and by 5.4% in the remainder of the state, which covers 54 rural counties.

Statewide, 53,776 people were homeless in Colorado last year, representing a 0.7% decrease over 2024, which authors of the report say, “underscores the effectiveness of current housing strategies and programs.”

In total, agencies provided homelessness assistance services to 84,425 people statewide, a 3.7% increase that report organizers say, “reflects our expanded efforts to catch households before they fall into crisis and with supports successfully staying housed.”

The Metro Denver Homeless Initiative received $30,000 for 2024 and another $30,000 for 2025 from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs to produce the report, Executive Director Jason Johnson said.

The outcome is to “ensure the public, funders and those conducting the work accurately understand the scale of homelessness in our state and to serve as a marker of progress,” he said via email.

“These numbers are showing exactly what we hoped, our collaborative Continuum of Care efforts are showing significant measurable improvement in Colorado’s housing stability,” Tyler Jaeckel, director of Colorado’s housing division, said in a statement.

Overall last year, nearly 27,500 Coloradans attained or maintained housing stability through prevention methods, permanent housing or otherwise leaving homelessness, which is attributed to more availability of housing and support services, the report said.

The size of the homeless population is difficult to calculate, those working in the industry say, since it’s often transitory and many people remain untraceable.

Thus, different studies show widely varying numbers. Last year’s Point-in-Time and Housing Inventory Count, a federally mandated census of how many people did not have stable housing on a given night in January, hit a record high of 1,745 people in El Paso County. That was a 52% year-over-year increase. But it doesn’t count homeless people in hospitals, jails and treatment centers.

The new report incorporates the Point-in-Time results along with numbers from the Colorado Homeless Management Information System, which tracks people who use services such as emergency shelters, soup kitchens and drop-in centers.

Homeless students in public schools who are reported to the U.S. Department of Education also are included, and other local information.

Organizers say the new report presents a more complete scope of the situation.

Beth Roalstad, CEO of Homeward Pikes Peak, an organization that provides street outreach to homeless people, supportive housing, addiction treatment and other programs, agrees that the new data is a more accurate reflection of reality.

The population boost might be attributed to new work in the community, she said.

In the past few years, Colorado Springs has beefed up emergency shelter options with more temporary pop-up overnight beds in inclement weather through an organization called HopeCOS.

Also, The Place opened a new 50-unit apartment complex for homeless young adults to leave the streets and created a larger centralized drop-in center for homeless teens and young adults.

Roalstad said she also agrees with the report’s calls to action that include expanding permanent housing, which she says is “the best intervention to stabilize households.”

According to the report, “While our permanent housing programs achieved an 82.1% housing stability rate, the primary limitation remains the availability of housing units. The system is performing at a high level; scaling the solution is the next essential step.”

Protecting existing housing programs and increasing prevention and early intervention efforts also are cited as being necessary to reduce homelessness.

“We’ve learned through Homeward Pikes Peak’s street outreach that it’s very effective to get people connected with resources such as shelters, detox and behavioral health, and expand prevention through rental and utility assistance programs,” Roalstad said.

“Keeping people housed is the least costly way to prevent homelessness.”

Communities that successfully stem the tide of homelessness will be those that “commit to providing additional local resources to help stabilize struggling families,” Milligan of Westside CARES said, “given some of the federal disinvestments in supportive programming, including Emergency Housing Vouchers, SNAP, Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies, as well as permanent housing.”