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San Clemente Officials Call County's Point‑in‑Time Homeless Count Into Question, Direct Staff to Send Formal Challenge
Summary
City staff and council raised substantial doubts about Orange County's 2026 point‑in‑time (PIT) count for San Clemente (reported 74 unsheltered, 39 sheltered), citing methodological concerns and urging staff to send letters and a city methodology report to county, state and federal agencies.
City staff and council signaled strong skepticism June 2 about the accuracy of the Orange County point‑in‑time (PIT) homeless count for San Clemente and directed staff to prepare formal correspondence documenting the city's concerns.
Community Development Director Adam Atamian told council that the PIT is a federally required snapshot used for funding and planning but that the city has ‘‘concerns regarding the methodology and resulting data associated with the point in time count’’ for San Clemente. The county's 2026 summary reported 74 unsheltered and 39 sheltered individuals in the city. Council members and outreach staff said local outreach data indicate a much smaller population that is regularly unsheltered and that a larger share of counted individuals are transients or were counted outside jurisdictional boundaries.
Outreach workers said the city's community outreach team engaged 47 unduplicated individuals in January, with roughly 20 people present throughout the month and others arriving or exiting. "The observers are the ones that are the most concerning because it's just anybody can just say that person's unhoused," outreach staff cautioned, arguing that volunteer observers can misidentify visitors or day‑users as unhoused people.
Mayor Prom Nobel and several council members sharply criticized the county numbers as inaccurate and said the city would provide its own data and methodology. "These numbers are pure fiction in my view," Mayor Prom Nobel said, and the council asked staff to draft letters to the Orange County Continuum of Care, the California Department of Housing and Community Development, the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, and HUD seeking review of methodology and requesting that county reporting be re‑examined.
Council also asked staff to include the city's outreach data and a concise explanation of local methodology in the correspondence. City staff confirmed they had attempted to invite county representatives to the meeting but had not received a response.
Next steps: staff to prepare and send a concise letter and supporting city outreach data to county, state, and federal agencies and to seek meetings to review PIT methodology; council signaled consensus to pursue the correspondence.
