Report shows Ohio has permanent housing beds for less than 10% of people experiencing homelessness

Ohio only has enough permanent housing beds for 8% of all Ohioans experiencing homelessness, according to a new report. 

In total, Ohio has 935 available permanent housing beds, according to a new report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

“(Homeless service providers are) providing critical life-saving services to people in need of housing on a day-to-day basis, and that work is made much more difficult by the fact that they don’t actually have the resources to do that work effectively,” said Daniel Soucy, research analyst at National Alliance to End Homelessness. 

Ohio has less than one bed per every ten people experiencing homelessness, according to the report. 

“We would never ask an emergency room doctor to do surgery without a hospital room to do that surgery in, but we consistently ask homeless service providers to try and end homelessness without enough housing and enough shelter to do that,” Soucy said. 

Marcus Roth, spokesperson for the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, said the report is concerning. 

“Funding and resources for Ohio’s homelessness system is being dwarfed by increasing need,” he said. 

“The real problem is the lack of resources for the system, combined with economic factors such as rising rents that are making options for people to avoid homelessness scarcer and scarcer.” 

In 2024, 32,000 Ohioans entered the homeless system, but less than half of them were able to get into permanent housing, Roth said. 

“Ohio’s homeless system is effective at getting people out of homelessness with very few resources, but it can’t keep up with the flow of people into homelessness,” he said. 

There were 12,196 people experiencing homelessness in Ohio in 2025 — a 3% increase from 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development annual Homelessness Assessment Report. 

HUD’s Point-in-Time count are one-night estimates of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness that took place in January 2025. 

About 20% of those experiencing homelessness in Ohio were unsheltered, according to HUD’s report. 

“It’s unsafe,” Soucy said. “It has impacts on people’s long-term health, and it’s an issue that we need to address urgently.” 

There has been a persistent shortage of shelter beds for more than a decade, Soucy said. 

“Asking service providers to end unsheltered homelessness, to find everybody a place to live when those resources just don’t exist, is not possible,” he said.

Ohio has about 63 shelter beds available per 100 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, Soucy said. 

No state had homeless response systems with enough permanent housing for everyone experiencing homelessness at the time of HUD’s Point-in-Time count.

“We’re asking service providers to end homelessness with not even nearly enough resources,” Soucy said. 

Permanent housing ends homelessness, the housing advocates said.  

“What that usually looks like is private apartments that are owned by private landlords collaborating with homeless services agencies, so that they will help accept clients, people that are coming out of shelter,” Roth said. 

“What’s happened, though, with the increase in rent prices we’ve seen the last several years is that fewer and fewer landlords are willing to do that because they can make so much more money by just going to the private market, raising rents, and it’s leaving a real dearth of options for getting people out of homelessness.”

Ohio has a shortage of 266,000 affordable and available rental units, according to the 2026 Gap Report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition and COHHIO. 

A full-time Ohio worker needs to be making at least $23.82 an hour to be able to afford a “modest” two-bedroom apartment, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition and COHHIO’s annual Out of Reach report.

Local, state, and federal lawmakers need to invest more in homeless response systems and permanent housing, Soucy said. 

“We need to ensure that there is enough permanent housing for everybody who is experiencing homelessness,” he said. “That means investments and resources and funding for these systems.”

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