The politics and progress against homelessness are reaching an inflection point in Los Angeles, and the next few months may determine whether the region turns the corner on this issue or loses patience with leadership.
Last week brought the tiniest bit of good news that underscores the delicacy of the moment: The annual count of those living outside was released and, for the first time in years, the numbers were down — but only fractionally.
According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the number of people living without housing in Los Angeles County was 75,312 as of late January, when the count was conducted. The total number of homeless in the city of Los Angeles was 45,252.
For the county, that represented a less than 1% decline. For the city, it was a drop of 2.2%.
Those are hardly numbers to be enthusiastic about. There are California cities with populations lower than LA’s unhoused community, and each of its members is struggling with the most basic human needs. They are vulnerable, desperate and ever-present in modern Los Angeles, as they are in cities across the state and nationwide.
Still, a decline is an achievement, especially since it reflects the first such decline since 2018. Have we reached a turning point?
“It’s too soon to say that,” Mayor Karen Bass told me this week after a press conference in MacArthur Park, itself a center of this population and the problems that come with it.
Bass is no dummy. She’s done more than any elected leader of this city in the past 30 years to take responsibility for housing the homeless, and she knows not to overpromise and under-deliver.
That’s a lesson that one of her predecessors, Antonio Villaraigosa, learned the hard way when he impulsively pledged to plant a million trees. He succeeded in getting just south of half that many, and was ultimately blamed for falling short, instead of being praised for planting more than 400,000.
So Bass is not likely to be tricked into rosy declarations on an issue so poignantly present in the daily life of her constituents. But she has been in office for nearly two years, and there is pressure on her to produce tangible results.
Beyond the overall numbers, she can — and does — point to accomplishments. The most recent homeless count also recorded a significant drop in street homelessness, which fell by 10% inside the city. Bass had also said from the outset that her first focus would be to dismantle encampments, and the results of this year’s count demonstrate her progress there: they’re down 38%.
“I’m very encouraged and excited that the count is down and that shelter is up and unsheltered homelessness is down,” Bass said. “But it’s going to take a while before we can say we’ve gone in a completely new direction.”
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is imposing new demands, making it hard sometimes just to tread water. When COVID-era rules preventing evictions were lifted, tens of thousands of Angelenos faced the possibility of losing their homes. Bass responded by directing the Mayor’s Fund to launch a program to protect renters. When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began shipping migrants to Los Angeles for his own political purposes, volunteers here welcomed the new arrivals and helped connect them with family or other resources for housing.
Those external hits keep coming.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that Grants Pass, Oregon, did not violate the Constitution’s protection against “cruel and unusual” punishment when it arrested homeless people for camping on public property — even when the city could not shelter everyone who needed it. That ruling, Bass warned, may encourage some Southern California cities to enact similar bans, driving the region’s homeless people to Los Angeles, where they need not fear arrest.
As the demands for housing and other services continue or even grow, it may exhaust the good will of groups and individuals who have supported the mayor’s work so far.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors — which has, in her words, “locked arms” with Bass — has authorized a November ballot measure that would double an existing quarter-cent sales tax for housing and homeless services. If approved, the measure would generate $1.2 billion a year to pay for housing, mental health care and substance abuse treatment.
But there is evidence that some groups are losing patience. BizFed, a powerful coalition of businesses and employers that supported the county’s existing quarter-cent sales tax, is balking at this move.
“We backed Measure H in 2017 to provide 10 years of dedicated resources to take care of our unhoused neighbors,” CEO Tracy Hernandez said in a statement. “However, Los Angeles County’s homelessness population grew 43% between 2018 and 2023. We call on our county’s elected leaders to show improvement before demanding more taxpayer dollars.”
Bass acknowledged that some people are eager for visible progress, though she said the measure on the November ballot includes strong accountability mechanisms to ensure that the money is spent on programs that produce real results.
In that sense, then, this is a race of interdependent forces: Success breeds confidence, but success can only be achieved with support, and support requires public confidence. Bass knows all too well that if support ebbs away before she and the city can make real progress, her work will be for naught — a prospect with bleak implications for the tens of thousands of men, women and children who live without shelter in America’s second-largest city.
Jim Newton is a veteran journalist, best-selling author and teacher. He worked at the Los Angeles Times for 25 years.
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