Fairfax County posted a slight decline in the annual point-in-time count of homelessness across the Washington region.
A total of 1,192 people in Fairfax were counted either in shelters or on the street for 2022.
That’s down 31 people, or 3 percent from 2021, and compares to a regionwide decline of 8 percent from a year before, led by a large drop in the District of Columbia.
The initiative is undertaken by local governments and is coordinated and reported by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
“While the region should celebrate how far we’ve come on homelessness, we will need to increase the number of affordable and available permanent-housing opportunities for the lowest-income households to continue that progress,” said Elisabeth Young, co-chair of the COG Homeless Services Committee, in remarks accompanying the report.
The annual count looks at nine jurisdictions across the region and totals 7,605 people experiencing homelessness, down from 8,309 a year before. About 58 percent of them were in the District of Columbia, down from 62 percent a year before.