Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass speaks about the 2024 homeless count on Friday, June 28, 2024. Homelessness numbers this year are down 0.27% in Los Angeles County and 2.2% in the City of Los Angeles. (Photo by David Crain, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Last week, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority announced that the number of homeless people counted in Los Angeles County was down slightly this year compared to last year.
Overall, the number of homeless people in Los Angeles County is estimated to be 75,312 this year, compared to 75,518 last year. If these numbers seem disappointing, that’s because they are.
The one bright spot is that the number of homeless people living on the streets with no place to live is declining. The LAHSA report found that the number of homeless people in Los Angeles County fell about 5% from last year to 52,365.
This good news was partially offset by a 12% increase in the number of people living in evacuation centres, to 22,947.
“To make more meaningful progress, we must strengthen tenant protection and housing security programs,” declared Lindsay P. Holbert, chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and LAHSA Board of Commissioners. “We must also create the permanent, supportive, affordable housing that so many vulnerable Angelenos desperately need. We know what needs to be done, and we have no time to waste.”
Of course, many of them are not only extremely expensive, but also wrong.
“Renter Protections” is just another way of saying that LA County mandates and restrictions on private property are exactly the opposite of what the County needs. Rather than rent control and stringent conditions on property owners to evict tenants, LA County needs to make it much easier to build housing. The key to that is fewer mandates, not more.
As for more programs, there is a lot of money being pumped into the Los Angeles homeless industrial complex — LAHSA’s website boasts that it “coordinates and manages over $800 million annually.” What’s needed are clear metrics of success and efforts to align with those metrics.
This editorial board has long heard from elected officials across the political spectrum that LAHSA isn’t working very well and needs an overhaul. It’s true that there is a crisis on the streets of Los Angeles County, but that doesn’t mean we should hand blank checks to politicians who have yet to deliver meaningful results.