SANTA CRUZ COUNTY — Each year, volunteers spread throughout Santa Cruz County to take the Point-In-Time Count: An annual snapshot of the county’s homeless population. The count helps keep track of the county’s efforts to house people and to keep them housed. This year’s count showed that the county’s homeless population was 20% lower than last year’s, continuing a trend that began in 2022. Though progress has been steady, it may not continue. Looming budget cuts threaten the county’s services and could cause future point-in-time counts to stagnate — or even to increase.

“It’ll be hard to be optimistic, or to expect that we can continue to have the same results, without any preservation of the resources that we’ve had in place,” said Tom Stagg, chief initiatives officer of Housing Matt

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