New data released this summer shows the scale of the ongoing homelessness crisis in Nevada — which ranks among the 10 states with the highest homelessness rate — and how the crisis differs across its two largest counties.

Clark County's 2026 survey counted nearly 9,000 homeless individuals in shelters or on the streets — the highest raw number since the county's all-time peak in homelessness during the Great Recession. The 2026 survey represents a 12 percent jump in homelessness from 2024, when data was last collected.

In Washoe, Nevada's second-largest county, the homeless population grew far less since 2024, increasing by just 2 percent. The numbers were collected as part of the federal government's homelessness prevention efforts, which require local authorities to conduct a volunteer-led "point-in-time" count of unhoused residents at least once every two years. 

Travis Sandefur, the director of Washoe County's Housing and Homelessness Services Division, attributed the relative stability in Washoe's homelessness numbers to the county's "long-term thinking" and its "intensive outreach" to unsheltered residents. 

"I want to get as many of those unsheltered individuals into our shelter as possible, so that we can then engage them with services," he said.

But even as Washoe County has succeeded in getting people off the streets, its total number of homeless residents today is nearly double what it was two decades ago. Meanwhile, Clark County has seen its homelessness numbers remain more stable while struggling year after year with a high rate of people going unsheltered.

Both counties have also struggled with connecting homeless residents to permanent housing once they do enter the shelter system, with the majority of Nevada's beds for homeless residents in temporary or emergency facilities.

Clark County Social Services Manager Brenda Barnes told The Nevada Independent that the county had expected its homeless numbers to jump in the 2026 survey, in part because it had revamped its methodology since 2024. 

Barnes, Sandefur and other leaders said they're confident about future progress. In part, that's thanks to the continuing work on Campus for Hope, a facility opening in 2028 with beds for 900 of Las Vegas' homeless residents. There are also new state investments in affordable housing, with the Legislature approving $21 million last year to build housing for homeless individuals with behavioral or physical disabilities. Clark County has also launched a variety of new initiatives — including investing $250 million in 10 shelters that are meant to eventually connect residents to permanent housing.

With these developments in mind, The Indy dove into data from 2025 and 2026 to provide readers a deeper understanding of the forces shaping homelessness in Nevada.

Racial and behavioral disparities

Nevada's homeless residents come from a wide array of backgrounds, although they are disproportionately likely to suffer from mental health challenges or substance abuse. 

The homeless population is also disproportionately Black — particularly in Clark County, where 14 percent of the general population identifies as Black compared with 43 percent of the homeless residents counted in 2026. This demographic gap has also grown wider over time: In 2015, 36 percent of homeless residents were Black. 

Barnes said the variety of identities and issues across the county's homeless population requires constant sensitivity. 

"Because we're so transient, we have somewhat vast demographics that frequent our community," she said. "We have to have the ability to be compassionate and understanding and open to different cultures and approaches. We can't approach everyone the same way."

She said one reason homelessness is so persistent in Clark County is due to Las Vegas' national and international recognition. Because it's welcoming to all and easy to reach from anywhere in the world, Barnes said Vegas is a common landing place for those seeking a second chance.

Many of the homeless residents of Clark County have told authorities that they first moved to Nevada because they hoped "to hit it big, to get rich," she said.

She and Sandefur said one demographic pattern putting new pressures on the state's homelessness resources is aging among unhoused residents, which creates new demands for more expensive and intensive healthcare.

Nevada is heavy on emergency housing, lighter on permanent

The two largest counties in Nevada both have an outsize share of emergency beds available to homeless residents but lack permanent housing opportunities, according to federally mandated data collected in 2025 on the inventory of beds for homeless residents.

The federal government defines two buckets of housing for homeless people, emergency and permanent. Emergency housing includes both traditional overnight shelters and transitional spaces where residents stay for longer — up to 24 months — but do not sign leases and must eventually move out. 

Permanent housing is intended to be longer-lasting, although the name is somewhat of a misnomer. Rapid re-housing, for instance, falls into the permanent housing bucket but only provides rental assistance to residents for 24 months. Permanent supportive housing, another subcategory of permanent housing, provides rental assistance to residents indefinitely. 

In Washoe, 48 percent of the county's roughly 2,500 total beds are in emergency shelters. Other counties that contain mid-sized cities such as Reno dedicate only 28 percent of their homelessness beds to emergency shelters. 

Sandefur said Washoe County views its emergency shelters as "the hub" of its approach, relying on them as a "stabilizing force" where residents come to find safety and access wraparound services such as psychiatric treatment and substance abuse counseling.

"That is truly transformative for those individuals who likely would not be successful if we just placed them into any type of stand-alone housing, and, you know, patted them on the back and said, 'Good luck,'" he said.

The largest of Washoe's shelters is the Nevada Cares Campus, an emergency shelter in downtown Reno with more than 600 beds available on any given night. 

Clark County doesn't yet have an equivalently sized shelter as the Cares Campus, but still overall provides more beds classified as emergency than permanent.

"We are a little front-end heavy with emergency shelters," said Barnes. She said the county wanted to focus more on permanent housing and that progress was being made, pointing to the county's Welcome Home initiative, a housing development fund launched in 2022 that aims at the lowest-income Nevadans.

Clark's homeless population is stubbornly unsheltered, while Washoe's has grown

Nearly 3 in 5 of the homeless residents counted in Clark in 2026 were unsheltered, compared with the 1 in 5 residents who were unsheltered in Washoe. 

The problem is not necessarily an indictment of the county's services: In 2025, Clark had enough homeless beds (nearly 10,000) to hold all the individuals counted in this year's homelessness survey (although that number is likely an underestimate). 

Rather, unsheltered individuals sometimes refuse the services they are offered. Clark County spokesperson Stephanie Wheatley said that data from 2021 to 2024 shows that of the homeless individuals offered shelter placement, only 23 percent of people accepted. 

"People experiencing homelessness have agency in determining whether and when they engage in services," she wrote, adding that providers of homelessness services work hard to build trust with residents and understand their individual needs. Wheatley said there were a variety of reasons residents might refuse shelter, and noted that there is a higher incidence of mental health and substance abuse challenges among the county's homeless population. 

Barnes said homeless individuals will often enter group shelters, also known as congregate shelters, but soon depart.

"They felt like they still weren't safe," she said, explaining residents are more likely to get into disputes in shared spaces and sometimes feel more comfortable on the streets. 

With that in mind, the county is investing significantly in "non-congregate" shelters, or facilities with private rooms available that are meant to help residents eventually transition into permanent housing. By 2027, Clark will have spent more than $252 million on 10 of these facilities — operated jointly by the county and Liberty Wellness, a nonprofit — with the goal of providing people superior shelter options.

But Clark County's unsheltered population is not out of the norm. A similar proportion of homeless residents are unsheltered in nearby counties such as San Diego County, at 48 percent; Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, Arizona, at 47 percent; and Los Angeles County, at 67 percent. 

Both counties have, or will soon have, large emergency shelters

While Clark County has a much higher population of people living on the streets, its overall homelessness rate has not gone up as much as Washoe County's, where homelessness has more than doubled in the last 20 years. That growth was four times the rate of growth of the general population and driven in large part by a 38-point jump in the number of homeless residents from 2020 to 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the pandemic caused the crisis to surge, "we really just kind of got the house in order," said Washoe County Commissioner Alexis Hill (D). She said the county implemented more central control over homelessness services, including by taking over some shelters formerly managed by Reno. It also began funneling its COVID-era federal grants into homelessness outreach — and as of 2026 has dedicated more than $35 million to the issue out of the $73 million total expended. 

Homelessness prevention efforts in Washoe were also transformed by the 2021 opening of the Nevada Cares Campus, whose seed funding came from the COVID money. The shelter has more than 600 beds and is considered "low barrier," meaning there are few restrictions on who can stay there. Although it's considered emergency housing, the shelter places no cap on how long people live there, and residents usually stay for at least a few weeks.

"The investment in the Cares Campus infrastructure was extraordinary and prescient by this community," said Sandefur, calling it "one of the best models I have seen."

Other counties nationwide have low-barrier facilities with wraparound services, although it's rare to have one with the sheer scale of the Cares Campus.

Advocates are hopeful that Clark County's homelessness crisis could similarly abate in coming years with the opening of Campus for Hope, currently slated for July 2028. The project will be the largest facility serving homeless people in Clark County. The current largest facility is the Courtyard, an open-air structure run by the City of Las Vegas where up to 550 people can sleep every night (although not on traditional beds). 

Clark's Campus for Hope will differ from Washoe's Nevada Cares Campus in that it will be a transitional shelter, guaranteeing residents longer stays — the average is expected to be nine months — but with a higher barrier for participation, including requiring residents' sobriety.

Barnes said she believed Campus for Hope will be useful in connecting people to permanent housing, even though it is not permanent housing itself. 

"They will be looking to accept referrals from partners and our non-congregate shelter sites to feed through the system, and the goal would be to then exit to permanent housing," she said. "We know we could always, always use more permanent housing."

Affordable housing key to long-term solution

Barnes and Sandefur each said their teams always need more help in fighting homelessness — especially in addressing one of its upstream causes of limited affordable housing. 

Nevada renters are some of the most cost-burdened in the nation, and while the state has moved to accelerate housing development, those changes are unlikely to affect prices for at least a few years.

In the meantime, Clark County is hoping that its non-congregate shelters serve as a bridge for residents to eventually enter permanent housing. Wheatley said the county is also investing in "newer interventions designed to respond earlier and more directly to complex needs," including partnerships with local community groups and law enforcement to reach residents who are chronically homeless or have particular vulnerabilities.

Sandefur said Washoe's current plan is continuing its focus on getting individuals sheltered but emphasized that no homelessness response could be adequate with the current limits on affordable housing supply. The biggest gap in Reno's housing market is units for the lowest-income individuals, according to a dashboard maintained by the city.

Sandefur called affordable housing "the elephant in the room" of the homelessness crisis — enormously influential, but discussed little. 

"The housing system is designed … to screen out a number of the folks that we would find in homelessness," he said. "People with evictions, poor credit, maybe background checks that may be less than stellar." 

That would have to change to fully address homelessness, he said. 

"Once you get people off the street and stabilize them, they are going to need somewhere to live."