Homeless population has nearly doubled since 2019 in this Contra Costa County city

RICHMOND — While homelessness rates swelled across most Bay Area counties during the pandemic, data from the latest count reports that Richmond experienced the steepest spike.

The city has fewer total homeless people than some of its larger Bay Area neighbors. But the number of unhoused individuals living in Richmond has increased an astounding 90% — to 632 in 2022 — since 2019. The city’s staggering homeless population ranked first countywide, followed by Concord with 436 unhoused residents.

The newly released data emerged from the annual point-in-time count, which is a community-wide attempt to identify every person living in a shelter, vehicle, tent or other makeshift structure on one night earlier this year. The goal is to gauge areas with the highest need in order to dole out vital funding and resources.

Contra Costa County saw a bigger jump than any of the four other core Bay Area counties — 35% higher than 2019 — after counting 3,093 unhoused people this year.

Broken down by demographics, the county’s homeless population was 51% White, 32% Black and 24% Latinx. Nearly 90% of the people surveyed were at least 25 years old, and 77% had lived in the county for more than a decade. Additionally, 12% were unemployed, compared to 3.1% across Contra Costa County as a whole, according to census data — down from a 14.2% high at the start of the pandemic in April 2020.

No data is available for 2021, when COVID derailed any plans to take the point-in-time count.

But for a city of roughly 110,000 people, Richmond’s spike is particularly stunning, especially compared to the Bay Area’s largest communities. For example, San Jose in Santa Clara County — home to more than 1 million residents — saw its population of unhoused people increase by only 11% compared to 2019. After counting 7,754 homeless people, San Francisco was the only county to see a reduction — a nearly 4% drop from three years prior.

Despite the staggering increase, the latest point-in-time figure for Richmond is actually lower than the number of homeless residents counted in the past, according to one tally from the Richmond Police Department.

The police department reported 800 people living on the streets and in encampments in 2017, one year before the city officially declared a “shelter crisis” because it did not have enough affordable beds to offer unhoused people.

Mayor Tom Butt thinks the root of the problem is the misguided and “ineffective” use of government money to help homeless people, and he places the blame on Councilmembers Gayle McLaughlin, Claudia Jimenez, Melvin Wills and Eduardo Martinez — collectively known as the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA).

He argued that policies that prioritize helping homeless encampments stay open and serviced have “frittered” the city’s money, which is needed to place people in homes.

“The city council majority says that these are not camps; they are neighborhoods, these are residents, they have a right to be there and we have an obligation to make them as comfortable as possible,” Butt said in an interview Tuesday. “Information spreads quickly. Richmond is seen as a place where, if you’re a homeless person, the city won’t take action to move you.”

Councilmember McLaughlin said that since pandemic-era eviction moratoriums have ended and inflation continues to increase everyday costs, one of the city’s remaining options to prevent even more people from losing their homes may be to establish lower caps on annual rent increases, a proposal that will appear on November ballots.

Councilmember Jimenez pushed back on Butt’s criticism entirely, saying that framing the issue as an “RPA problem” is not only false, but also ignores the city’s efforts to support county and state leaders, who are primarily tasked with resolving issues of health and housing.

She also said that progress is already being made; the city council voted in July to sunset the encroaching RV encampment along Rydin Road by Sept. 30 — another example of how city leaders are trying to craft flexible housing solutions for homeless residents in Richmond.

“We’re trying to work in a holistic way and look at them as people, not just a problem,” Jimenez said Tuesday. “We cannot just push people out without additional resources. What we’re hearing is that county services are not enough, so if we want to see results, we need to provide additional services and support. That’s what we have been doing.”