LOS ANGELES (CNS) – After postponing its 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count due to the January fires, the L.A. Homeless Services Authority will kick off the first night of its annual operation Tuesday.
The tally provides a point-in-time snapshot of homelessness throughout the L.A. Continuum of Care — which covers most of the region except the cities of Long Beach, Pasadena and Glendale. This year’s count will begin with hundreds of volunteers set to traverse the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys, and the Metro Los Angeles area.
LAHSA CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum, L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis and City Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez will host a news conference at 7 p.m. Tuesday at El Rio Community School at 211 S. Ave. 20 in northeast L.A. to kick off the three-day operation.
Mayor Karen Bass, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Wendy Greuel, chair of the LAHSA Commission and Sean Pleasants, co-chair of the Lived Experience Advisory Board, are expected to attend as well.
Volunteers will take to the streets Wednesday to count encampments, RVs and other makeshift homes across the San Gabriel Valley and East Los Angeles. On Thursday’s final night, volunteers will span the Antelope Valley, West Los Angeles, South Los Angeles and the South Bay/Harbor areas.
The joint county-city agency expects to release data from the count in the late spring or early summer.
Last year’s count found 75,518 unhoused people in Los Angeles County, a decrease of 27% compared to the 46,260 in 2023. Officials also noted a reduction in unsheltered homelessness through the county, with a 5.1% decrease in 2024 compared to 2023, while the sheltered count increased by 12.7%
In the city of Los Angeles, unsheltered homelessness decreased by 10.7% while the shelter count increased by 17.7%, meaning more unhoused individuals were being placed into temporary housing such as motels and hotels, shelters and other types of facilities.
The data represented an overall decrease in the homeless population for the first time after five years of steady rises.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released a report in December that found homelessness increased in the nation by 18% in 2024, but highlighted that L.A. was among a handful of cities that bucked that national trend.
In its report, the federal department highlighted the Maui fire, among other natural disasters, which led to an increase in homelessness — a concern Los Angeles County officials share following the devastating January wildfires that destroyed Pacific Palisades and Altadena communities. Officials are crafting measures aimed at helping people in danger of falling into homelessness due to the fires.
Meanwhile, two separate but similar proposals were introduced at the county and city level, with elected officials agreeing to explore creating departments to focus on homeless services.
The move came after a county Auditor-Controller Department report cited several concerns about LAHSA’s management of homeless funding, such as failing to recoup cash advances provided to subcontractors, failing to establish repayment schedules for subcontractors, lack of adequate records for tracking cash advances awarded to other agencies and failure to adequately monitor contracts with recipient agencies and document whether subcontractors who received funds actually met the terms of their contracts.
Kellum previously noted that several of the issues were a result of fiscal practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. LAHSA officials highlighted several measures intended to correct these issues.
LA City Council members criticized the agency for its “lack of transparency” regarding data and operations.
In response, LAHSA created new data dashboards on its website last year to give a better picture of its work. The dashboards allow viewers to access data on street outreach, interim housing and time-limited subsidies; details on LAHSA-funded programs and their efficacy; as well as Bass’ Inside Safe initiative and the county’s Pathway Home program — both intended to reduce encampments and bring people inside to temporary housing.
The dashboards can show how many unhoused residents entered the rehousing system in respective City Council or Board of Supervisors’ districts, how many people individual programs have helped, and the performance of local service providers.
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