Los Angeles county is home to more than 69,000 unhoused people, count finds

Los Angeles has experienced a 4% increase in its homeless population during the pandemic, with 69,144 unhoused people counted across the county this year, according to government data released on Thursday.

The Los Angeles homeless services authority (Lahsa), which conducted the count in February 2022 after skipping a year during the pandemic, said the growth of the unhoused population had slowed in the last two years, in part due to pandemic programs and funding. The previous count, conducted in January 2020, showed a 13% jump from 2019.

The new figures are a rough estimate from a single day and are believed to be an undercount. While the count suggests some progress compared to previous spikes, 70% of the county’s unhoused population are still living outside, with 48,548 people considered unsheltered – rates that are significantly higher than other US cities with homelessness crises.

The humanitarian disaster in the largest county in the US has pushed unhoused people to live outside in tents, encampments, cars, RVs and makeshift structures, scattered under freeways and bridges, in major city parks and beach communities, on streets and sidewalks, and in remote desert terrain. An average of five unhoused people now die every day in LA county, some due to extreme summer heat or hypothermia in the winter.

While cities across the US are grappling with worsening housing crises and inequality, LA and California have faced particularly intense scrutiny over a problem that seems intractable despite the state having the fifth-largest economy in the world, a budget surplus and some of the nation’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

In the city of LA, officials counted 41,980 unhoused people, marking a 1.7% increase from the 2020 count and a slower increase from previous years. Within the city’s homeless population, 68%, or 28,458 people, were considered unsheltered.

At a press briefing, Lahsa leaders acknowledged residents may not feel as if homelessness is rising at a rate slower than pre-pandemic years and said that was probably due in part to a substantial jump in visible signs of homelessness. Officials estimated that there had been 17% increase in people living in tents, vehicles and makeshift shelters during the pandemic.

There continues to be severe racial disparities in the crisis, with Black residents making up 30% of unhoused Angelenos, while accounting for only 9% of the broader population. There has also been a substantial increase in unhoused Latino residents, who now make up 44% of the unhoused population. Latinos make up 49% of LA county residents.

Officials said nearly 40% of unhoused people were experiencing substance abuse disorders and/or serious mental illness, meaning the majority of people experiencing homelessness suffer from neither. Still, Lahsa said that overdoses among LA’s unhoused population had increased by 80%.

Lahsa leaders emphasized that the root cause of the crisis was a lack of affordable housing and suggested the region needed to add 800,000 units over the next eight years to stem the crisis.

The new figures come as LA moves to end its Covid-era protections against evictions and rent increases by the end of the year, paving the way for more displacement. Even with restrictions in place, thousands of renters have been evicted during the pandemic.

“One-time federal pandemic assistance and policies helped keep people in their homes and expanded shelters,” said Kristina Dixon, co-executive director of Lahsa, hinting at a potentially worsening crisis. “However, many of the policies and funding sources that made an impact are now ending, leaving households unsure if they will be able to keep their homes and less resources for the housing system to respond.”

The region’s systems could house every currently unhoused person in LA county within the next three to four years, “but the number of people falling into homelessness outpaces our ability to house them”, added Molly Rysman, co-executive director.

Dixon also cautioned that homelessness was a “lagging indicator” and that future counts could potentially show “significant increases”. Dixon further noted that the count had been conducted during the Omicron Covid surge, which presented challenges to the process and particularly made it harder to count unhoused youth and families, as programs were closed. The count found that the number of unhoused senior citizens increased by 6.5%, suggesting a worsening catastrophe for the ageing population in the region.

Local and state officials have poured an unprecedented amount of money into efforts to combat homelessness in recent years, but the new data suggests it hasn’t been enough.

LA city leaders, facing pressure from voters, have responded by passing an anti-camping measure banning people from sleeping outside within certain boundaries. Critics say the crackdown and sweeps have punished people who have nowhere else to go, shuffling the unhoused around without providing permanent housing.

LA county is also winding down its pandemic program called Project Roomkey, which provided temporary motel rooms for unhoused people in an effort to get them off the street and out of group shelters. The program aimed to transition people into housing, but advocates have warned that some people are forced to wait months or years for placements, and that when Roomkey sites shutter, some end up back on the street or in different temporary programs.

In April, when Heidi Marston stepped down as the head of Lahsa, she called the crisis a “monster of our own making” and argued and that local leaders were too focused on “quick fixes” to remove unhoused people from sight instead of addressing the root causes of the problem, including the extremely high cost of living in the region.