On any given night in 2024, an estimated 25,000 people across the Bay Area were sleeping on sidewalks, in parks, in tents, or in vehicles—about 2.4 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness for every interim housing bed in our region. Interim housing isn’t the end goal; people need permanent, affordable homes. But it can be an effective way to help someone come in off the street and connect to the services and stability they need to move forward. That’s why All Home advocates for interim housing, alongside permanent housing and homelessness prevention as concurrent solutions to meaningfully reduce unsheltered homelessness.
Interim housing is a broad category that includes emergency shelter and transitional housing, often paired with supportive services, meant to provide safe, stable living situations for people experiencing homelessness until they move back into permanent housing.
To understand how our region’s interim housing system is changing, All Home partnered with the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley on a multi-year study of interim housing across the nine Bay Area counties. Five interim housing providers—COTS, Dignity Moves, Insight Housing, LifeMoves, and Reach for Home—shared their data and expertise, and the study was shaped by a lived experience advisory board of people who have been both interim housing residents and program staff. The first report from this study, Expanding Interim Housing: Recent Trends in the Bay Area, is out now.
What the research found:
- Supply has grown by 50 percent since 2018, but demand still outpaces it. The region added about 5,500 beds between 2018 and 2024, reaching roughly 16,100 beds total—the most since HUD started tracking this data. Most of that growth went toward adults without children, whose bed count nearly doubled; family beds grew more slowly and remain below their 2007 level.
- Providers are moving toward more private, dignified spaces. Sixty-two percent of beds in the region are now non-congregate, meaning people get their own room or unit instead of a shared dormitory. Providers said privacy is often what convinces someone who’s been avoiding shelter to finally come inside, and motel conversions, modular construction, and tiny house communities are driving this shift.
- Interim housing isn’t just in the big cities. Two-thirds of beds are in five cities—San Francisco, San José, Oakland, Santa Rosa, and Redwood City—but 53 of our 101 municipalities have interim housing programs, including smaller, wealthier cities that haven’t traditionally invested in shelter. Most sites are also well-connected: three in four beds sit within half a mile of high-quality transit, and seven in ten are within half a mile of health care.
- None of this happens without sustained public investment. State programs like Homekey, HHAP, and the Encampment Resolution Fund have put $755 million into the region’s interim housing since 2020, and local governments are covering the rest—San Francisco alone spent $200 million on interim housing in fiscal year 2025. Public land matters too: 40 percent of the region’s beds sit on government-owned parcels.
This research helps us understand how our region’s interim housing system has grown and diversified—and where the opportunities are to keep expanding it quickly, affordably, and with dignity. It also reinforces something we hear from providers and residents alike: interim housing can only do its job if people are also able to move into permanent housing when they’re ready.
This is the first of three reports from our interim housing study with the Terner Center. The second report, coming later this year, will dig into staffing, services, and the true cost of operating interim housing well. The third will focus on resident experiences, outcomes, and what actually helps them get to permanent housing.
Read the full report to learn more, and watch the recording of our July 2026 webinar, where providers, a lived experience advisor, and county staff discussed what these findings mean on the ground.
