After marking slight reductions in homelessness in 2024, Los Angeles city and county officials Monday are poised to announce results of the 2025 Homeless Count.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority postponed this year’s count, which typically occurs at the end of January, due to the wildfires that devastated parts of L.A. County. By February, hundreds of volunteers spanned across the L.A. region over the course of three nights for the count, which serves as a requirement for seeking federal funding.
A month later, LAHSA officials determined that unsheltered homelessness is expected to decrease by 5-10%, citing preliminary raw data.
“When I first came to LAHSA, I publicly stated that we wanted to reduce unsheltered homelessness within three years. We’ve done it in two,” outgoing LAHSA CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum said in a March statement. “The turning point came when the city and county aligned by declaring states of emergency on homelessness and proceeded to collaborate through LAHSA to address the crisis.”
LAHSA has credited encampment resolution efforts such as L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program and the county’s Pathway Home for the decline in homelessness, as well as other policies and programs in place.
There were 75,312 unhoused people in the county in 2024 compared to 75,518 in 2023, a decrease of 2.7%. Additionally, there were 45,252 unhoused people in the city of L.A. in 2024, compared to 46,260 in 2023, a decrease of 2.2%.
Unsheltered homelessness in the city decreased by approximately 10.7% and in the county it dropped by 5.1%, according to the 2024 homeless count.
Meanwhile, the city and county of Los Angeles advanced measures to change their approaches to the homelessness crisis.
The county Board of Supervisors pulled some $300 million generated by Measure A, a voter-approved half-cent tax, for homelessness prevention, related services and initiatives from LAHSA. The county is expected to establish a new county department of homelessness in 2026.
County supervisors recently appointed Sarah Mahin as the director of this dedicated entity for homeless services.
L.A. City officials approved a new bureau within the Housing Department that is expected to track contracts with homeless service providers and performance outcomes as well.
Those decisions came in response to scathing audits that detailed LAHSA’s failures in financial accounting of services and a lack of transparency related to performance outcomes.