Despite the high rates of poverty in Texas, levels of homelessness are relatively low when compared to other states in the US. In 2025, an estimated 8.8 Texans were homeless for every 10,000 residents. For the unsheltered homeless (e.g. those sleeping in vehicles, or on the street), Texas falls closer to the national median for states with a rate of 3.8 unsheltered homeless for every 10,000 residents.
When thinking about why homelessness rates might vary across sates, we might assume it is most strongly related to the levels of poverty in the state. The first graph below challenges this assumption, revealing effectively no relationship between poverty rates and rates of homelessness across states. In fact, many of the states with the highest rates of poverty have some of the lowest levels of homelessness. The second graph compares levels of homelessness to median income levels. This graph reveals that there is no simple linear relationship between median income and homelessness; however, it also shows that states with above average rates of homelessness are overwhelmingly found in higher income states.
