If you missed the webinar for World Homeless Day, held annually on October 10, a recording of “Homelessness: It’s Not What You Think,” is available to view. Locally, a coalition of providers hosted the webinar to educate community members on actionable ways to address homelessness and equip community members with facts and information to debunk myths about homelessness. The coalition includes SBACT, Santa Barbara Foundation, PATH Santa Barbara, City Net, Santa Barbara Rescue Mission, and the City of Goleta.
You can also watch a series of “Everyone Has a Story” videos created for World Homeless Day that includes interviews from nine South Santa Barbara County locals, two from Goleta, who have lived with the experience of homelessness. Here are links to the two stories from Goleta:
For more information, and to watch all nine interviews, please visit www.sbact.org/whd.
The aim of World Homeless Day is to raise awareness about the needs of people who currently experience homelessness and promote work in local communities to address this crisis.
California is largely considered the epicenter of homelessness in the United States, with over a quarter of the county’s unhoused population residing in the Golden State. Currently, over 181,000 people in California are experiencing homelessness (source).
Santa Barbara County’s 2024 Point-in-Time Count shows that 2,119 people are experiencing homelessness across the county. Although the Point in Time Count has limitations in providing an accurate census, this does represent a 12% increase over the 2023 count of 1,887 (source).
To learn more about World Homeless Day, click here.