The city’s 40% reduction target hinges on whether more people can move into housing. Birmingham officials estimate that about 500 people meet the criteria for chronic homelessness — being unhoused for at least a year while living with a mental or physical health diagnosis. The two-year goal would mean helping roughly 200 people find housing, alongside a $3 million city investment in homelessness programs and services.
At Friday’s State of Homelessness Summit, city leaders and community partners discussed housing needs, services and challenges facing families, according to ABC 3340. Mayor Randall Woodfin said addressing homelessness requires community involvement beyond city hall. The station reported that he directed that all homelessness funding have a direct or indirect connection to housing. City support has included street outreach, community-partner capacity, mental health services, social workers, case managers and an outdoor day shelter, with a smaller portion dedicated to homelessness prevention.
Who Qualifies, and What the Numbers Mean
Birmingham Director of Unhoused Strategies Alannah Melton said about 500 people fall into the chronic-homelessness category the city is targeting. Reaching the 40% goal would mean helping approximately 200 find housing; it is a target, not a guarantee that 200 people will be housed. Melton said the city aims to add 500 beds to the system over two years, though the same report says another 300 beds are still needed to reach that broader goal. The city’s Home for All initiative has capacity for 100 people, and the Jimmy Hale shelter is expected to bring another 100 emergency beds online by this time next year.
Melton said the goal is to offer people an actual place to go rather than simply moving them between locations, and city officials want people to have somewhere to stay before encampments are closed. Birmingham is coordinating homelessness services with providers, police and community partners, and plans to keep working with nonprofits, housing providers, schools and other partners as the effort continues, per the same account.
Families Doubled Up and Kids Without an Address
Melton said the city is also working to help families who are doubled up or tripled up in housing without an address of their own, with efforts prioritizing literally homeless families, including those living in cars or motels. Birmingham City Schools reported 777 students experiencing homelessness at the end of the last school year, and the district has placed social work case managers in every school while working with the city and the Birmingham District Housing Authority to help families find housing, the station notes.
One Roof Executive Director Gordon Sullivan Jr. told the station that children make up a significant portion of people served by the homelessness response system, with one in seven people served by the system under the age of 18. Families with children are often prioritized and move into housing more quickly because of children's vulnerabilities, according to the report. “No child should have to sleep outside,” Sullivan said.
A Housing Bottleneck Years in the Making
One Roof Executive Director Gordon Sullivan Jr. identified a shortage of permanent beds as a key barrier to leaving homelessness. He said federal funding shifts and other external factors have contributed to losses in permanent housing units. One Roof reported that its system of care lost 37% of its permanent housing units between 2023 and 2025. Meanwhile, al.com reported a 7.8% increase in homelessness across central Alabama from 2023 to 2024. It also reported that One Roof counted about 810 people experiencing homelessness across Birmingham and Jefferson, St. Clair and Shelby counties in January 2025; that single-night count likely underrepresented the true scale of the problem.
The squeeze on permanent housing has had real consequences elsewhere in the county. Al.com reported that the Jefferson County Housing Authority's Continuum of Care program once helped 370 households — 585 people, including 128 children and teens — find housing before the authority said it could not sustain the program due to insufficient funding. Despite the losses, Sullivan said One Roof still brings about $10.2 million in housing support to the community each year through federal funding, and he said Birmingham's $3 million investment could help strengthen the system further.
Outcomes, Spending, and an Accountability Dashboard
One Roof reported that 97% of people in its permanent supportive housing programs remained housed or moved to another permanent housing option, and that 70% of people in rapid rehousing programs remained housed and did not return to homelessness. According to One Roof, that performance data is sourced directly from the Continuum of Care's HMIS system and reported annually to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, reflecting system-wide outcomes rather than any single project or program.
Birmingham is preparing a report on how most of its $3 million investment has been spent, but Melton said specific dollar amounts were not available during her interview with the station. City funding has supported cooling and warming stations and street outreach, among other services. The city plans to launch a public dashboard at the beginning of 2027 as a progress report card, allowing residents to track the effort and hold the city accountable.
What the budget and regional data show
The city has not yet provided a detailed accounting of the $3 million investment, according to Melton’s comments to the station. Separately, the City of Birmingham’s approved FY2027 budget lists approximately $800,000 annually in Community Development Block Grant support for homelessness services. The city says its planned dashboard will make progress public; the stated target is to reduce chronic homelessness by 40% and help about 200 people find housing.
The City of Birmingham’s 2025 draft fair-housing analysis says overall homelessness in the Birmingham-area Continuum of Care decreased from 2019 to 2024, while the number of unsheltered people increased. That regional measure covers a broader population and area than the city’s chronic-homelessness target. One Roof describes the annual Point-in-Time count as a snapshot of sheltered and unsheltered homelessness on a single January night. The same draft city analysis identifies a shortage of affordable rental housing in Birmingham, a broader market condition that may constrain housing options but does not by itself explain any individual outcome. City of Birmingham, 2025 draft Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice; the city’s approved budget lists the CDBG support described above.
The new 40% chronic-homelessness target follows a separate, earlier goal the city announced in December 2025 to reduce the chronically unsheltered population — about 200 people — by 40% by December 2026, according to al.com's earlier reporting, which described a plan to add 300 beds in 2026 alongside a $1.5 million city allocation. HUD's 2024 inventory, meanwhile, recorded 2,103 total year-round beds for the Birmingham/Jefferson, St. Clair and Shelby Counties Continuum of Care, a snapshot that excludes beds still under development. A separate report cited by WBRC found that 40% of people who come through Birmingham's homelessness system are experiencing homelessness for the first time.
