Los Angeles homeless rate rises 9%
Background: An essential, if imperfect, annual snapshot.
The increase in Los Angeles mirrors trends unfolding in cities across the country, including Phoenix, as a housing shortage has led to rising costs, putting pressure on families.
A recent study led by a homelessness expert at the University of California, San Francisco, found that a lack of affordable housing, not mental illness or substance abuse, was the leading cause of homelessness in California.
The point-in-time census of people living outside or in homeless shelters takes place all over the country and is federally mandated to happen at least every two years. In Los Angeles, volunteers fan out for a few nights each January to count people who appear to live outside or in vehicles. Homeless service providers conduct surveys to get more detailed demographic information.
Across the country, local governments and their data collection partners release their censuses at different times, so not all cities have provided their 2023 numbers yet. Washington, DCalready reports an 11 percent increase, while the Phoenix area said the homeless population had increased by 7 percent. Chicago and New York have said their homeless population has risen over the past year as asylum seekers arrived; New York officials said Wednesday that more than 100,000 people are living in homeless shelters for the first time.
While counts are an imperfect snapshot of homelessness at one point, the count in Los Angeles County, the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area, remains one of the few ways to measure progress in addressing the most pressing problem of homelessness. the province. The housing crisis has evolved into a complex and ongoing humanitarian emergency over the past few decades.
Why it matters: LA is a test case for tackling homelessness.
Los Angeles isn’t the only U.S. city to struggle with homelessness, but its homeless population is disproportionately large, with about 30 percent of the nation’s homeless population living in California. As a result, Los Angeles is a kind of large-scale test case for which solutions work and which don’t.
For years, local leaders and advocates working on homelessness solutions have complained about a lack of urgency and coordination in Los Angeles, where the city and county have separate but overlapping governments.
And during the height of the pandemic, sprawling encampments growing under highway overpasses, in parks, on residential streets and on beaches became the most powerful symbols of the sense of chaos that permeated the city. While some residents called for the forced removal of homeless people from the streets, activists protested against measures such as brutal shortcuts.
Mayor Karen Bass, a longtime community organizer and former member of Congress, was elected last year on promises to quickly make a dent in a colossal problem. She pledged to humanely relocate thousands of people living in encampments by spending more time outreach before cleaning. She has said the only way to achieve that goal is to improve communication between nonprofits and government agencies.
“The data collected in January represents the crisis our city is facing,” she said. “The challenge for us is huge, but we will continue to work with urgency to bring in Angelenos.”
What’s Next: Does Recent Progress Mean Less Homelessness Next Year?
Dr. Adams Vellum noted that this year’s census took place a little over a month after Mrs. Bass was sworn in and that the mayor’s efforts in the months since have produced “overwhelming success.”
Ms Bass recently highlighted that her government had brought in 14,381 people in the first six months of her term. She has also pushed for accelerating the construction of affordable housing.
But whether that work will actually reduce the number of people struggling with homelessness remains to be seen. There’s a lot at stake for her administration for next year’s census.