The City with the Most Homelessness in the U.S.

Simon Whistler is a prolific YouTube host whose many channels explore Cold War infrastructure, legal history, global engineering, urban analysis, and more. His newest channel, Places, focuses on cities and civic conditions, often highlighting issues that receive little national attention. Whistler, with over 8 million subscribers across his channels, goes beyond reporting by reframing familiar realities. 

To my surprise, Whistler featured Eugene in the latest segment of Places. I watched the episode—titled The City with the Most Homelessness in the US—with simultaneous interest and discomfort. The numbers and their proportional framing stood out. Homelessness is a daily presence here: encampments near storefronts, tents along the riverbank, and erratic behavior tied to untreated mental illness or addiction. And yet, many of us still choose to look away. Whistler’s video makes avoidance harder. Our city holds a dubious distinction that’s difficult to reconcile with its scale. That fact deserves acknowledgment, not evasion. 

Whistler built his account around comparative data. Lane County’s 2025 Point-in-Time count recorded 3,509 homeless individuals. With Eugene’s population just under 180,000, the rate reaches roughly 190 per 10,000 residents, significantly higher than in New York, Los Angeles, or Washington D.C. Even if the count is evenly distributed across all of Lane County, Eugene’s rate still ranks as the highest in the country. The video presents the numbers plainly. No embellishment is required. 

Some suggest that Eugene’s high per capita homelessness rate reflects regional migration. The city’s mild climate, visible tolerance, and history of social services have made it a known destination for unhoused individuals seeking relative safety. That dynamic doesn’t explain everything, but it contributes to the scale. 

Viewer comments on the video, many from fellow residents, reflect a range of reactions. Some describe homelessness as a visible, daily reality that reaches into neighborhoods, parks, and commercial areas. Others express frustration with city leadership and the lack of coordination across agencies. Several cite the decline of CAHOOTS, Eugene’s mobile crisis response program, as a moment when trust in coordinated care began to erode. Concerns about safety, sanitation, and limited shelter capacity appear frequently. One comment stood out for its clarity: “We don’t need more awareness. We need a system that works.” That sentiment, repeated in various forms, reflects a shared view: the problem is widely seen, but the response hasn’t matched its scale. 

Homeless encampment, Washington-Jefferson Park (photo by Tyrone Madera, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

The crisis has reshaped how public space functions. Parks, sidewalks, and greenways now serve as shelter zones, often by necessity rather than design. This shift raises questions about access, stewardship, and the civic role of shared space. The built environment, however well-intentioned, cannot remain neutral in the face of such visible displacement. 

Oregon’s housing crisis stems from decades of systemic shifts. Mid-century redevelopment erased low-cost boarding houses, Nixon’s 1973 housing moratorium shifted support to volatile private rentals, and the 1980s timber collapse destabilized Eugene’s economy, narrowing options for low-income residents. 

Deinstitutionalization, starting in the 1960s and accelerating under Reagan, closed psychiatric hospitals, redirecting patients to underfunded community care. Clinics like White Bird struggled to fill the gap, leaving many with severe mental illness cycling through shelters and jails, a process Whistler calls "transinstitutionalization." Similarly, Oregon’s 2020 Measure 110 aimed to decriminalize drug possession and fund treatment, but delayed funding and a fentanyl surge led to record overdoses, prompting its 2024 reversal via House Bill 4002. Both cases highlight a pattern: good intentions undone by uneven execution. 

Whistler presents the timeline without commentary. The sequence speaks for itself. 

Eugene has taken steps to address the crisis and increase housing stock. The city revised zoning codes to allow missing middle housing, supported infill development, and encouraged accessory dwelling units. These changes help, but they don’t go far enough. Without scale, speed, and coordination, architectural solutions remain aspirational. 

The city could revisit models once discarded, such as Single-Room Occupancy developments. This housing typology is no panacea, but it could serve as part of a broader system. Eugene never maintained a large, formal stock of SROs, but boarding houses and small hotels once served similar functions. Redevelopment and zoning shifts eliminated many of these options by discouraging shared facilities and high-density lodging. Reintroducing this typology, updated for dignity and paired with support services, could help fill a gap that newer strategies have failed to address. 

Unlike Eugene’s fragmented efforts, cities like Houston (prioritization of permanent housing), Austin (investments in supportive housing), and Indianapolis (eviction prevention) show that sustained coordination yields progress. Eugene can learn from these examples, not by replicating them, but by recognizing that fragmented efforts rarely produce structural change. 

Local governance must play a leading role. The city council, county agencies, and nonprofit providers operate within overlapping jurisdictions and mandates. Coordination remains uneven. Eugene has invested in outreach, shelter expansion, and transitional housing, but critics argue that the system lacks strategic guidance. Technical plans exist, but implementation lags. The result is a civic landscape shaped less by strategy than by reaction. 

This isn’t a policy critique, nor is it an attempt to crack an enormously complex problem. I’m not offering solutions. I am pointing to a framing, one that Simon Whistler presents clearly, and that many residents have echoed. The numbers are real, and the conditions are all too visible. The video doesn’t solve the dilemma, but it makes it more difficult to ignore. 

I write as a resident and former architect, someone trained to observe systems, interpret civic conditions, and document what persists despite intervention. I see the reality of Eugene’s homelessness crisis every day. To my discredit, I’ve too often chosen to look away. Whistler’s video makes that harder. Eugene isn’t just another city with a homelessness problem. By the numbers, it ranks as the worst. That fact doesn’t call for outrage. It calls for acknowledgment, for a record of how a city of this scale became a statistical outlier despite efforts from all quarters. For those of us familiar with the business of development, it is a reminder that we work within enormously complex systems whose problems resist easy resolution. 

Eugene’s crisis demands more than awareness—it requires us to see the systems at work and ask what role we can play in reshaping them. For architects, residents, and policymakers alike, the first step is refusing to look away.