New count reveals increased homelessness in Oxford, Butler County

Oxford’s homeless population increased by nearly 25% from 2024 to 2025, according to a recent point-in-time (PIT) count by Oxford Area Solutions for Housing (OASH). Countywide, the number of people living unhoused increased by more than 30%.

Last year was OASH’s first time leading the PIT count to find the number of homeless people living in Oxford specifically. Diane Ruther-Vierling, a founding member of OASH, said the 2024 count revealed 37 people that met the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s definition of homelessness in Oxford. This year’s PIT count was conducted Jan. 29 and found 46 people, Ruther-Vierling said.

Countywide, the PIT count found 485 homeless people this year, including more than 250 outside of shelters. That’s a 30% increase from last year, based on numbers provided by Butler County Commissioner Cindy Carpenter.

“It’s a surprise countywide and for Oxford, yes,” Ruther-Vierling said. “One of the more disturbing things is, this time there were three HUD-homeless children, and we had not found any children in the past.”

Last year, OASH also conducted an unofficial count of Oxford’s homeless population using the McKinney-Vento definition of homelessness, a more expansive measure. That count found that nearly 100 people were homeless under the expanded definition, which focuses on children and includes those who live in “substandard housing” or “are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason,” among other conditions.

While multiple children were homeless under that definition last year, none were unhoused based on the HUD definition. During this year’s PIT count, Ruther-Vierling said three children were staying in the cold shelter operated by the Talawanda Oxford Pantry and Social Services (TOPSS), and she didn’t know what their living situation would be after the cold shelter stopped operating.

Thanks to TOPSS’ cold shelter, none of the unhoused people included in Oxford’s PIT count this year were outside in the cold the night of the count, Ruther-Vierling said. OASH relies on its partnership with TOPSS to ensure an accurate count, including by monitoring whether any people who identify as homeless used TOPSS’ pantry services in the week following the count.

Homelessness can seem like a hidden issue in Oxford, Ruther-Vierling said. Just because it isn’t a big city doesn’t mean there aren’t people in need of help and services.

“I teach a class at Miami online … and we talk about homelessness. Miami students have no idea there’s a homeless problem in Oxford,” Ruther-Vierling said. “Rural homelessness is so easy to hide because they live in the woods; they’re not very visible. THey don’t have camps out in public like they do in other places.”

Cindy Carpenter, a Butler County Commissioner, has spent years bringing people across the county together to address the systemic problems that lead to homelessness.

Three decades ago, Carpenter says Butler County failed to create its own metro housing board together. As a result, the county’s strategy to address homelessness is led by the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO), a statewide nonprofit organization that monitors homelessness in 80 rural counties across the state, including Butler County.

That structure has led the county to have less agency in addressing homelessness locally, Carpenter said, a problem she’s working to address.

“We have a grassroots movement to change that and apply to HUD to be recognized as a standalone county and make our own decisions on where HUD homeless dollars go in Butler County,” Carpenter said.

Butler County’s current services for people living without shelter are managed by multiple groups with different funding sources, including faith-based organizations and shelters. By setting up a Metro Housing Authority, Carpenter said, leadership will be able to look at the root causes of homelessness more holistically and better allocate funding.

Carpenter has led several countywide forums on homelessness in the past four years. Leaders from municipalities across the county are quick to identify the strain homeless populations put on resources like police departments, she said, but it’s taken time to move toward addressing more systemic issues.

Chief among those issues, she said, is that the funding model under COHHIO which was established in the 1990s no longer adequately addresses the state of homelessness in Butler County. The county is one of the fastest growing in the state, making the problems it faces less and less similar to rural counties with more spread out populations.

In Carpenter’s recent conversations with HUD officials and statewide leadership, she says there’s been recognition that the current system doesn’t work for Butler County, and she sees opportunities for progress. As the county continues to analyze its homeless population, Carpenter said she hopes to see funding changes soon.

“With what we get [from COHHIO], we cannot serve the homeless population,” Carpenter said. “It’s literally impossible.”