In 2025, about 36,000 people received homelessness services in Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties from dozens of social services organizations across the region.
A new Kinder Institute survey suggests the scale of housing instability locally may be even greater.
About 12% of residents earning less than $50,000 in the three-county area said they were temporarily homeless — living in someone else’s home, a hotel or motel, a car, a tent or a shelter — in the prior year, the survey showed, a rate that translates to 141,400 adults in the region.
The figures, derived from a survey of 8,800 people in early 2026, offer one of the fullest pictures to date of housing instability in the Houston area. Among all respondents, 5% said they had been temporarily homeless in the prior year. The survey results were weighted to reflect Houston’s demographics.
The Houston region has made great strides in reducing homelessness over the past decade, moving tens of thousands of people off the streets. But Houston’s poverty rate leads the nation, and the Kinder Institute survey revealed one-third of households earning less than $25,000 found it “very difficult” to afford their housing costs over the prior year.
The survey results point to a form of homelessness that often remains hidden, said Dan Potter, co-director of the Kinder Institute's Houston Population Research Center, and a lead researcher on the report.
“The number is startling and a call to action,” Potter said. “While we may not see this type of homelessness on our way to work on the corner or under an overpass, it still has consequences. Temporary homelessness is destabilizing and affects the development of children, young adults’ educational pursuits and employment opportunities, as well as people’s health and well-being.”
Kelly Young, president and CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County, or CFTH, said the finding rings true with what her organization and its partners see. What makes temporary homelessness a challenge to address is that it falls outside traditional definitions of homelessness, which is what CFTH’s federal funding is designed to address.
“We’re really sitting at the end of the continuum for those who've been on the street the longest and are the most vulnerable,” Young said. “This (survey) helps create a better continuum of experience regarding how people see and where people actually sit in homelessness.”
A fresh measure
Over the past two decades, data about the scope of Houston’s homelessness issues primarily came from two sources: the annual Point-in-Time count and a regional database used by leading social services groups.
The Point-in-Time count, conducted as part of the federal Continuum of Care Program, involves organizations across the country tabulating the number of sheltered and unsheltered homeless people they could identify on a single day. Over the past several years, that figure has hovered between roughly 3,000 and 3,300 in the three-county Houston area.
The regional database, which documented the 36,000 residents served, offers a broader look at housing instability. More than 100 organizations participating in The Way Home, the Houston area’s main homeless response system, enter information about each person to whom they provide various types of homelessness services.
While the Point-in-Time count is limited to homeless people, the database includes those who received permanent housing, homelessness prevention and other non-emergency services. Roughly two-thirds of the 36,000 residents who received homelessness services wouldn’t have met the threshold to be included in the Point-in-Time count.
The Kinder Institute’s new survey provides an even wider look at housing instability, capturing people who may not have sought homelessness services but lacked a stable place to stay at some point in the prior year.
Rather than asking respondents whether they considered themselves homeless, researchers asked whether they had spent time living in several places that weren’t their permanent home.
“We wanted to measure people’s experiences,” Potter said. “Because it is the experience that matters, not the label that gets put on it.”
The definition of temporary homelessness used in the survey aligns with the McKinney-Vento Act, which allows schools to identify and support students experiencing housing instability, including those temporarily staying with relatives or friends.
‘Get people thriving’
Young said the findings reinforce conversations CFTH has been having about preventing housing instability before people reach the point of needing intensive homelessness services. CFTH’s work largely focuses on people experiencing chronic homelessness and others with the highest needs.
Young said the survey highlights a much larger group of residents who might benefit from rental assistance, utility bill help or eviction prevention efforts.
“Whenever we have more data, we have a better opportunity to figure out what works and what doesn't,” Young said. “That group of people who are not reaching out could tell us what is stopping them, what they were thinking or what the solution was.”
For Potter, the challenge moving forward is ensuring that forms of unseen housing instability receive the same attention as more noticeable types.
“It's one of these problems that if we solve it, the public will have never seen it. The image I just keep going back to is that person who has a suitcase and a couch," he said. "That is surviving. We have got to get people thriving."
