Three months ago, Cheyenne was 37 and had been unhoused since July, after a falling out with her family. It was her first time living on the street, and she had recently lost her car — the one place she had been able to sleep consistently.
“I didn’t realize how tough it was going to be, especially being a woman,” Cheyenne said.
Cheyenne spoke to Arizona Luminaria reporters in January as they traveled the city to talk with people living unsheltered in Pima County during the city’s annual Point in Time Count — a one-day effort conducted nationwide to estimate how many people are experiencing homelessness.
Across Pima County, hundreds of women are navigating homelessness in similar ways.
Cheyenne is among those represented in the 2026 count, which found that women and girls make up about 35% of people experiencing homelessness locally, while men account for nearly two-thirds.
Point in Time Count 2026: Tracking homelessness across Tucson and Pima County
On one day each January, communities across the country are engaged in a united effort: a de facto census of people who are living on the streets, in shelters or transitional housing on… Keep reading
In a vacant lot just south of the Greyhound Bus Station, Izzy and his buddy gathered their bags and moved slowly in the 46-degree January morning.
Izzy is Pascua Yaqui and grew up on tribal land, he said. He declined to say how long he has been unhoused. But he was a casino bartender with an education. He went to summer camp as a kid.
“Right now, being unhoused is a choice,” he says. “For some people they go through trauma or they never had a family to begin with. Some people were never able to hit that launch pad.”
People can be set up for failure, he said.
“There needs to be an abolishment of the law that makes it illegal to be homeless. Take politics out of social welfare. It’s a health care problem.”
Data from the 2026 count shows how deeply those structural factors run. Of the 2,130 people counted experiencing homelessness in Pima County, more than 70% were living unsheltered — in places like washes, sidewalks and encampments — rather than in shelters or transitional housing.
Kane Taylor hadn’t expected to be in Tucson as long as he had been, but it has been hard to get away. A car accident in 2021 left him with a pronounced limp, it also pushed him into a spiral of bad luck that ended with losing his apartment.
He had been homeless since 2021. His belongings were in a shopping cart on the day of the count, and he wore a gray sweater with the hood up to guard against the morning chill.
“It’s scary because you don’t know if you’re going to make it through the night,” Kane said. Part of that is whether you’ll be assaulted or robbed, but the alternating heat and cold are also difficult.
For people like Kane, long-term homelessness is common. The Point in Time Count found that at least 829 people in the region are considered chronically homeless, meaning they’ve experienced homelessness for a year or more while also living with a disability or health condition.
Kane’s had trouble finding a shelter that works for him.
“You have to go to rehab just to get a spot inside,” Kane said. “With funding cut, everybody’s screwed.”
The numbers reflect that gap. Only about a quarter of people counted were staying in emergency shelters, with even fewer in safe haven programs.
Those funding cuts have also led to a reduction in shelter beds and, in turn, a decrease in sheltered homelessness exacerbated by temporary shelter renovations limiting bed availability.
Kane also had his share of trespassing tickets while sleeping outside in the washes and parks that city ordinances now prohibit sleeping in. Most of those likely had warrants, but he said going to a warrant quash event can end in probation, a commitment he would find hard to keep without a phone or steady place to live.
He was saving for a bus ticket and one night in a hotel to help launch him out of Tucson.
“Don’t come here,” was Kane’s advice.
Nearly 400 volunteers participated in the 2026 count, surveying people across Tucson and Pima County on Jan. 27 to better understand who is experiencing homelessness and what services are needed.
The results show a crisis that, while remaining steady, is extensive, with the 2,130 people experiencing homelessness across Pima County representing a 4% decrease from last year. The decrease is not proof of a trend as overall homelessness in Pima County has remained relatively flat since 2022, even as national data shows significant increases in recent years.
The PIT count numbers are widely expected to be an undercount simply because it’s not possible to count every person, officials say.
But the data also highlights disparities.
Indigenous people remain overrepresented among those experiencing homelessness, as do Black residents.
Many are also living with serious health challenges. Hundreds of people counted reported serious mental illness or substance use disorders.
The count “helps us understand how many of our neighbors are experiencing homelessness and the capacity required of the homeless response system to meet community need,” organizers said in the report.
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