The number of people living on the street, both in the city of Los Angeles and across much of Los Angeles County, is up compared to the previous year, dealing a fresh blow to Mayor Karen Bass as she runs for reelection.<\/p>\n
L.A.\u2019s unsheltered homeless population \u2014 those living outdoors or in their vehicles \u2014 went up by 7.9% after two consecutive years of decreases, according to two people familiar with the numbers presented by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority in closed-door briefings. <\/p>\n
Overall homelessness, which includes those living in shelters and other temporary facilities, increased by 3.4% compared to the previous year, those sources said.<\/p>\n
Both asked to remain unnamed because they were not authorized to publicly discuss LAHSA\u2019s presentation, which focused on this year\u2019s annual point-in-time count<\/a> conducted in January.<\/p>\n The numbers represent a significant setback for Bass, who is seeking a second term in the Nov. 3 election and has made the fight against homelessness a central part of her agenda, touting her administration\u2019s progress in moving people indoors. According to the LAHSA count, 45,194 homeless people live in the city of L.A.<\/p>\n Bass, in a statement, attributed the increases to an array of issues, including funding cuts by the state and federal governments. She described a lack of adequate county services, such as mental health and substance counseling, as a contributor to the crisis.<\/p>\n Even with those obstacles, the city has reduced unsheltered homelessness by 11% since 2023, while also housing more than 1,000 homeless veterans, Bass said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis crisis was ignored by city leaders for decades, it\u2019s only now that we\u2019ve seen a historic decline,\u201d she said. \u201cI will never stop fighting until we end street homelessness, because no Angeleno should be sleeping on the street.\u201d<\/p>\n LAHSA has been briefing city and county officials in the run-up to the public release of the numbers on Friday. The agency did not immediately provide comment on the latest count, or the reasons for the increases.<\/p>\n Officials with LAHSA also declined to provide this year\u2019s margins of error. Because the increases in the city and county numbers were close to last year\u2019s margins of error, it wasn\u2019t clear whether they would be considered statistically significant.<\/p>\n City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who oversees the council\u2019s homelessness committee and is running against Bass, called the citywide results disappointing but not surprising \u2014 while saying that her own district saw \u201csignificant\u201d decreases.<\/p>\n \u201cLeadership at City Hall has not shown the willingness to shift toward an approach that actually moves people into permanent housing,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cAnd these results make clear that the Mayor\u2019s approach is not working well enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Bass had repeatedly touted a 17.5% drop in unsheltered homelessness over two years in L.A., offering signs of hope in a city where homelessness had been steadily trending upward for a decade.<\/p>\n Inside Safe, the mayor\u2019s signature homelessness program, has moved more than 6,000 people into hotels, motels and other types of interim housing since Bass took office in December 2022. But by May 31, 41% of those people had returned to homelessness<\/a>, according to LAHSA figures collected separately from this year\u2019s homeless count.<\/p>\n The increases in homelessness are \u201cbad for Los Angeles, and therefore bad for the incumbent mayor,\u201d said political science professor Fernando Guerra, who heads the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.<\/p>\n \u201cFor her political campaign, there\u2019s nothing good about this count,\u201d he said. \u201cIt contradicts her main campaign theme. It contradicts the successes of her first term. It contradicts the narrative of her reasons for running for reelection.\u201d<\/p>\n Bass was already facing an array of challenges this summer: anger over the protracted cleanup from the Lineage fire in Boyle Heights,<\/a> where smells and vermin have plagued the surrounding neighborhood; multiple water main breaks, including one that caused major flooding; and questions about the overlapping roles held by a crisis communications consultant who advised her office for free.<\/p>\n The mayor\u2019s favorability ratings took a nosedive last year in the wake of the Palisades fire<\/a>, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead. In the months that followed, Bass was also confronted with a major budget crisis and federal immigration raids that devastated families and businesses.<\/p>\n The numbers from this year\u2019s homelessness count were not as grim in other parts of the region.<\/p>\n Overall homelessness increased by 1.2% in the \u201ccontinuum of care,\u201d which covers 85 of Los Angeles County\u2019s 88 cities, including L.A., according to people familiar with the numbers presented by LAHSA. Unsheltered homelessness in those communities increased by 3.5%, those sources said. (Long Beach, Pasadena and Glendale conduct their own counts.)<\/p>\n L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, in her own statement, described the point-in-time count as one data point and \u201cnot the whole picture.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople experiencing homelessness \u2014 and the communities impacted by this crisis \u2014 care less about esoteric debates over the numbers,\u201d she said. \u201cThey care more about what they see on our streets \u2014 whether people are getting into housing, accessing the care they need, and being accountable for how their tax dollars are being spent.\u201d<\/p>\n The backsliding comes at a difficult time not just for Bass but for LAHSA, a joint city-county agency that has become a major target of the Trump administration, which moved last month to suspend LAHSA<\/a> from seeking or receiving funds for housing and homelessness programs. At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to help some of the region\u2019s neediest residents.<\/p>\n