The Story of Homelessness in Solano County is beginning to Change!
- Wanda Cook
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
The newly released 2026 Point-in-Time Count found that homelessness in Solano County declined by 10.6%Â since 2024. Even more significantly, unsheltered homelessness declined by 11.5%.
This is not a victory lap. On one night in January, 1,543 people were still without a permanent home, including 1,271 people living unsheltered. Chronic homelessness increased by 9%.
Behind every number is a human life shaped by forces that are rarely simple: the rising cost of housing, shrinking economic opportunity, untreated mental illness, addiction, disability, trauma, and systems that have too often required people to navigate their most difficult moments alone.
But we should not miss what these numbers may be telling us.
For years, the prevailing message has been that homelessness is only getting worse and that nothing we do is making a meaningful difference. Solano County’s results challenge that narrative. They give us reason to ask whether California’s simultaneous investments in behavioral health treatment, recovery services, care coordination, housing support, and community-based infrastructure are beginning to move us toward something better.
This is precisely where organizations like Archway Recovery Services are operating at the leading edge.
At ARS, we understand that housing alone does not resolve the conditions that can make housing difficult to sustain. Treatment alone is also insufficient when a person leaves recovery without stability, income, connection, or a place to live. The work must be integrated: treating substance use and mental health conditions, coordinating complex care, providing recovery housing, helping people secure and maintain permanent housing, and remaining present for the long road of recovery.
That is the promise behind CalAIM, Enhanced Care Management, Community
Supports, the Drug Medi-Cal Organized Delivery System, and DHCS investments such as the Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program. These initiatives are beginning to replace fragmented interventions with a more connected continuum of care.
At Archway CalAIM and the Drug Medi-Cal system of care explicitly connects high-need Medi-Cal members with coordinated care, addiction medicine, and housing-related supports, while our BHCIP grant of $15M expands community-based behavioral health treatment capacity. DHCS describes these statewide strategies here and here.
A single PIT count cannot prove which program produced which result. But it can signal direction. With over 1200 unique individuals served at Archway, we know first hand the positive effect of well implemented CalAIM and DMC programs have on the lives of individuals and the greater community
A 10.6% decline deserves more than a passing headline. It deserves deeper analysis, sustained investment, and a new public conversation about what becomes possible when treatment, housing, healthcare, and community work together.
The problem remains real. The work is far from finished. But progress is real, too.
Perhaps this is the beginning of a new era in Solano County: one defined not by resignation, but by evidence, coordinated action, community compassion, and hope.
Because homelessness is not inevitable. And recovery, when surrounded by the right community, is possible.