{"id":8173,"date":"2025-10-16T17:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T17:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/8173\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T17:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T17:00:08","slug":"the-l-a-homeless-count-misses-people-who-arent-in-tents-or-cars-a-new-rand-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/8173\/","title":{"rendered":"The L.A. homeless count misses people who aren’t in tents or cars, a new Rand study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The annual survey that tracks homelessness in Los Angeles County has increasingly missed people in three key neighborhoods, falling short by nearly a third this year in Hollywood, Venice and Skid Row, a study by Rand found<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rand\u2019s researchers, who canvass the three neighborhoods every two months, found that the shortfalls coincide with an increase in the percentage of people \u201csleeping rough,\u201d without the protection of a vehicle or tent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means that the places with the highest needs are becoming the very places where the county\u2019s official count is most underestimated,\u201d said the report, released Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The shift to rough sleeping likely results, at least in part, from the success of city encampment reduction programs such as Inside Safe<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Since 2021, programs offering motel rooms to people living in tent encampments nearly halved the number of tents identified by Rand.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, as the initiatives drove a real decline in unsheltered homelessness, they also removed the easiest-to-count unsheltered subpopulation,\u201d likely contributing to the annual count\u2019s growing inaccuracy, the report said.<\/p>\n

The failure to count those living in the harshest conditions could distort the distribution of local and federal funds that is geared to the point-in-time, or PIT, count, lead author Louis Abramson said.<\/p>\n

Communities with high numbers of rough sleepers will get less than those where homeless people still predominately live in vehicles and tents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s bad because rough sleepers need greater resources than people in tents,\u201d Abramson said. \u201cIf there\u2019s an undercount and that undercount correlates with need, you\u2019d be systematically pushing resources away from need.\u201d<\/p>\n

To improve the annual count, the report recommended that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which conducts it, should employ professional field teams to independently cross-check the counts of thousands of volunteers who spread out over the county on three nights in January.<\/p>\n

Mayor Karen Bass and LAHSA both issued measured responses to the report.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe report shows that homelessness numbers are down and Inside Safe is working,\u201d Bass said in a statement. \u201cEveryone agrees that the PIT count needs improvement, and while there is still work to be done we welcome any opportunity to substantially improve reporting methodology. However, there is no disputing the fact that homelessness IS down.\u201d<\/p>\n

LAHSA interim CEO Gita O\u2019Neill said in a statement that the agency \u201cwelcomes critical analysis of the count data and the opportunity to compare our findings with RAND.\u201d <\/p>\n

The point-in-time count, though \u201ca vital and standardized tool,\u201d is not \u201cthe last word on understanding homelessness in our region,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Data collected year-round by outreach and services teams \u201cis the single most important source that informs systems planning and design,\u201d O\u2019Neill said. \u201cUnlike the single-night PIT Count, this continuous, 365-day data allows us to precisely track needs and adjust service delivery approaches.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement suggested that Rand respond to a forthcoming request for proposals to serve as LAHSA\u2019s technical partner on the homeless count for 2027-2029.<\/p>\n

The Rand report stopped short of disputing the countywide 9.5% decline in unsheltered homelessness reported by LAHSA in the last two years. It noted that extrapolating the undercount in the three neighborhoods, which account for about 10% of the entire homeless population in a typical year, would indicate that up to 7,900 homeless people living in the city of Los Angeles may be missing in the 2025 count. <\/p>\n

But the different mix of people living rough and in vehicles and tents in different parts of the city makes comparisons unreliable, Abramson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe actual decline LAHSA has quoted, we\u2019re not arguing with that,\u201d he said, but added, \u201cIf you want to see the decline continue, you\u2019re going to have to develop outreach strategics for the non-encampment population.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rand\u2019s Los Angeles Longitudinal Enumeration and Demographic Survey (LA LEADS) has been tracking homeless populations in the three neighborhoods since 2022, both as a check on the official count and to observe changes throughout the year.<\/p>\n

Researchers return to each neighborhood every two months. They count individual tents, vehicles, makeshift shelters and people sleeping unsheltered. Using a methodology similar to LAHSA\u2019s, they estimate the number of people occupying each type of shelter to calculate total populations.<\/p>\n

Their results initially jibed with the annual count, falling within five percentage points above or below it. But then Rand\u2019s count remained almost flat over the next two years, with ups and downs midyear, as the annual count showed decreases in the three neighborhoods. A gap of 26% in 2024 widened to 32% this year.<\/p>\n

Rand\u2019s results varied considerably by neighborhood: LAHSA reported only 61% of Rand\u2019s number in Skid Row but 81% in Hollywood. Venice was in between.<\/p>\n

They also showed swings during the year as the number increased in the summer months and declined in winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cRough sleepers show a pronounced up-and-down trend which is the lowest in the winter,\u201d Abramson said.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also an inverse correlation between tents and rough sleepers. When one goes up, the other goes down.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what\u2019s causing that,\u201d Abramson said. One possibility is that it\u2019s a response to the weather. Another is that people get tents and then lose them in cleanups.<\/p>\n

But overall the dominant population in the city is vehicle dwellers, while in the three neighborhoods it\u2019s now rough sleepers, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The annual survey that tracks homelessness in Los Angeles County has increasingly missed people in three key neighborhoods,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[8222,8225,8220,8224,1493,8221,48,52,51,6390,47,50,49,212,592,6391,3729,8223,8219,178,72],"class_list":["post-8173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-decline","tag-abramson","tag-annual-count","tag-high-need","tag-homelessness","tag-key-neighborhood","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lahsa","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-number","tag-people","tag-rand","tag-report","tag-rough-sleeper","tag-tent","tag-vehicle","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}