LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – 10/11’s recent report on a ‘Lincoln Vital Signs’ report shows a sharp decrease in unhoused people in the past decade. However, local researchers at UNL’s Center on Children, Families, and the Law said trends are picking back up.
The research indicated that, after a steady decline from 2012 to 2023, homelessness in Lincoln has increased over the past two years.
Researchers conducted a single-night count of homeless people in the city in January 2025.
They had a headcount of 542 people.
The previous year, in 2024, the count was 501. It’s a steady uptick from the 428 headcount in 2023.
This year’s count was also a 20 percent increase from the single-night count in 2018, which was 451.
That’s just counting those who were living on the streets.
An additional 1,942 people were living in a shelter or housing program that night.
“We’re seeing levels above 100% utilization in our family and single women’s shelters,” said Jeff Chambers, the Senior Director at the center. “That’s not a good sign because we typically don’t see that level of utilization until the late fall and winter.”
Chambers said the cause for the recent rise isn’t a mystery.
When the pandemic ended, so did some funding for housing.
He added that a large part of the increase in homelessness since 2023 is a result of the loss of rental assistance dollars in the community, due to budget cuts.
The center also cited that wages for many working households have not kept pace with the cost of housing.
Chambers said the fair market rent has gone up 36 percent since 2018, while wages have only increased 29 percent in the same time period.
He said that when folks are already struggling, even minor additional costs could have a tremendous impact.
“Working for $26 an hour or $30 an hour at a job, and they have a significant medical expense, that can seriously jeopardize their ability to pay the rent,” Chambers said. “And over the course of a couple of months, that can result in eviction.”
During the pandemic, Lincoln alone spent $52 million of federal funding over a period of four years for rental assistance.
That was 10.5 million a year.
Today, Lincoln has $200,000 from federal and state resources for an entire year.
Chambers said it’s enough to help two or three households a month.
The center said if the city wants to see change, as a community, it needs to do a better job of developing affordable housing for people at the lower end of the economic scale.
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