The Brief

Los Angeles County’s unhoused population declined slightly for the second year in a row, according to authorities responsible for the region’s annual point-in-time homeless count.

Results of the 2025 event, released Monday, show homelessness dropped by 3.4% in the city of L.A. and by 4% countywide, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA. That includes the number of people in shelters and those sleeping outdoors.

Last year, LAHSA reported smaller declines over the previous year in both the city and county — 2.2% and less than 1% (.27%), respectively.

Prior to that, the numbers had been trending upward since 2018.

LAHSA said several factors contributed to the reductions, including the clearing of encampments throughout the region, and nearly 28,000 people being placed into permanent housing last year — a record high.

Mayor Karen Bass speaks at a press conference before LAHSA's annual homeless count at El Rio Community School on Feb. 18, 2025 in Los Angeles.

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Carlin Stiehl

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LAist

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“These results aren’t just data points — they represent thousands of human beings who are now inside, and neighborhoods that are beginning to heal,” L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement. “This Point in Time Count makes one thing clear: change is possible when we refuse to accept encampments as normal and refuse to leave people behind.”

Va Lecia Adams Kellum, CEO of LAHSA, said during a news conference Monday that the lower numbers of unsheltered unhoused people are a direct result of the city and county’s work with clearing encampments.

“ Over the last two years, our leaders came together to bring people inside, and their efforts have paid off,” she said.

" We've made real progress toward ending homelessness, and we cannot let that momentum falter now," she continued. "The dear people on our streets are relying on us, and we must continue to focus on bringing them inside."

Elected officials react 

Most city and county officials are cautiously optimistic about L.A.’s homeless count data, but they say the numbers of people experiencing homelessness are unacceptably high.

“Nobody should see these results and think our job is done,” said L.A. City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky. “We’re still in a crisis, but for the first time in a long time, we’re seeing the tide start to turn. We’ve learned a lot over the past few years about what it takes to resolve encampments and get people housed for good."

“This proves that when we focus resources on the things that work, we get results,” she continued. “Now we need to double down and do it faster.”

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said the region needs to make more investments toward solving the crisis.

"At this pace, it would take three centuries to end homelessness in Los Angeles County,” she told LAist in a statement.

L.A. City Council members noted there were some doubts about the accuracy of the data. A recent report by the RAND Corporation suggested LAHSA had systemically undercounted homelessness in some parts of the city during last year’s count in January 2024. Last month, LAist reported that LAHSA removed more volunteer observations when reconciling data in 2024 than they had in previous years.

L.A. Councilmember John Lee, who represents the Northwest San Fernando Valley, told LAist there are questions about how the homeless count numbers are validated and ultimately reported.

“When there’s this much at stake, accuracy matters and we can’t afford to make decisions based on data that may not reflect what’s actually happening on the ground,” he said in a statement. “Until we have a more reliable and consistent system of reporting, it’s difficult to fully trust that the numbers we’re seeing are telling the whole story.”

LAHSA and city leaders say the data may not always reflect the reality of every block or every street, but it remains a useful estimate of homelessness throughout the region. And that estimate is trending downward.

L.A. Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said the city’s efforts are working.

“I find it interesting that the folks who question the numbers this year did not have the same energy when the numbers were trending upwards, no one interrogated that data,” Harris-Dawson said in a statement. “Detractors root for failure.”

Councilmember Nithya Raman, chair of the city’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, told LAist the results reflect the reality she’s seen experienced in her district, which includes parts of Silver Lake and the San Fernando Valley.

“ The reality is that the count — if it is imperfect — is imperfect in the same way each year, and it is really meant to be a tracker of our progress over time,” Raman said.

She continued:  “I'm really encouraged by the progress that we're making after years of increases, sometimes double digit increases.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass at a news conference from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s Welcome Navigation Center.

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Vitus Larrieu

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LAist

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Reaction from nonprofit leaders

Officials within the organizations that support unhoused Angelenos were pleased with the numbers but acknowledged the challenges ahead, particularly the loss of federal money that pays for housing vouchers and other services.

Peter Laugharn, president of the nonprofit Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, said systemic problems are still forcing people onto the streets.

“ Unaffordable housing is still a leading cause of first-time homelessness, and decades of economic and racial inequities continue to shape who is the most vulnerable,” he said.

Katie Hill, CEO of Union Station Homeless Services, said was concerned that the end of COVID-era federal programs, like emergency housing vouchers, would make her organization’s work more difficult.

“ The resources that made [the decline in homelessness] possible are drying up or being reduced and, in the next couple of years, we will see it's not going to be the same trend,” she told LAist. “ We need to prepare ourselves as a region, as a community to have to pick up the pieces and expect that there will be more homelessness.”

Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, president of LA Family Housing, agreed.

“ Without that type of investment, as we saw in ‘25 and in ‘24, I fear that we're going to shift from this positive trend in the years ahead,” she told LAist.

More on the results 

In February, LAHSA and its volunteers counted more than 43,500 unhoused people in the city of L.A. and more than 72,000 in the county during this year’s annual tally. Those totals include people in shelters and on the streets.

The vast majority of unhoused people in the city of L.A. are living on the street rather than in homeless shelters.

For the second year in a row, that population decreased substantially. It fell by 7.9% this year, LAHSA said, and by 17.5% over the past two years. (There were 26,972 unsheltered people living in the city in February, down from 32,680 two years ago.)

Meanwhile, the number of people in the city of L.A. living in “interim housing,” or shelter, increased 4.7%. This year, LAHSA counted 16,727 people in the city of L.A. living in shelters, motel rooms and tiny homes. That’s up from 15,977 last year.

This year, the count showed fewer people living in tents and other makeshift shelters in the city of L.A. There were 13.5% fewer vehicles and tents used as shelter compared to the previous year.

The agency credits efforts like the city’s Inside Safe and county’s Pathway Home programs for moving people off of the streets. Both programs clear encampments and offer people temporary shelter with a path to possible permanent housing.

More permanent housing became available last year, LAHSA said. There were about 2,960 new apartments provided in 2024. But that was far short of an estimated 485,000 affordable homes needed.

Why the count is important

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, requires local governments to conduct a full census of the region’s unhoused population every other year.

L.A. County has been doing a count annually since 2015, except in 2021 when it was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

LAHSA’s annual count is the largest of its kind in the country and involves coordinating thousands of volunteers who go out in groups over three nights to tally people and dwellings in more than 3,000 census subtracts.

The annual point-in-time count is typically held in late January, but this year’s count was postponed a month because of the wildfires, which were still burning in the Palisades and Altadena at the time.

LAHSA officials said they made that decision to avoid jeopardizing the safety of volunteers or the accuracy of the count, as many people were displaced from their homes or normal routines. Several wildfire-impacted areas were counted by special teams of LAHSA employees, rather than volunteers.

The delay helped depress volunteer turnout this year, LAHSA and public officials said. About 10% fewer people signed up compared with last year’s count. Some who registered this year did not show up after LAHSA moved the count back by a few weeks.

But officials at the agency said they do not believe the disaster affected the quality of the data.

This was the first year 100% of the data from the count was entered digitally, through the Esri app, and signed off by the people doing the counting, according to LAHSA. Last year, problems with the app and shifting policies for reconciling data collected through the app and data collected on paper forms led to questions about accuracy.

LAHSA representatives said the methodology for gathering the date hasn’t changed, but the tools have. Authorities said the agency is committed to producing the most accurate homeless count possible.

For the first time, LAHSA released preliminary raw data for this year’s homeless count in March, much earlier than in previous counts. The move came a week before the L.A. County Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote on whether to pull funding from the regional agency.

LAHSA spokesperson Paul Rubenstein told the agency’s commissioners in April that it was important for stakeholders to have the early data “as they were considering significant shifts to the system.”

“Last year was not a statistical anomaly,” Rubenstein said. “The path we were on was getting us where we wanted to go.”

Adams Kellum celebrated the early results at the time.

“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.”

Criticism of LAHSA

Federal Judge David O. Carter, who is currently overseeing a major legal settlement on homelessness, said he saw the release of unverified numbers from the count as “political gamesmanship.”

“My view is that they're in a political battle for their lives right now,” Carter said.

Times have been tough for LAHSA in recent years. The agency faced fierce criticism after a county audit last year and a March report commissioned by Carter, both of which found the agency had failed to properly track spending and hold vendors accountable.

Those findings prompted the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to vote in April to shift hundreds of millions in taxpayer funding for homeless services away from LAHSA and create a new county homelessness department to eventually administer the funds itself.

The city is weighing a similar move.

Days after the county pulled out of LAHSA, Adams Kellum announced her resignation as CEO. Adams Kellum, a Bass ally, has led the organization since 2023.

Even though LAHSA’s role is being reduced, the agency remains tasked with overseeing the annual homeless count. However, Adams Kellum told the agency’s commissioners last month LAHSA may not have enough funding to do a proper count next year, because of city of L.A. budget cuts and the recent county funding decision.

“We anticipate that the current allocations will not provide enough funding for LAHSA to conduct an unsheltered count in 2026,” she said.

Big Bear’s famous bald eagles — Jackie and Shadow — appear to be welcoming a new chick into the world.

The first pip, or crack, was spotted in one of the feathered duo’s two eggs around 10 a.m. Friday, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs a popular YouTube livestream of the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake.

More than 26,000 people were watching the livestream shortly after the organization confirmed a pip had been spotted, which signals that an eaglet is starting to poke its way out of the egg shell.

“Yesterday afternoon, evening and throughout the night we heard little chirps coming from the chick,” Friends of Big Bear Valley wrote on Facebook to more than a million followers. “This indicates that the chick was able to break the internal membrane and took its first breath of air.”

As of Friday, the first egg is around 38 days old and the second egg is about 35 days old. Jackie and Shadow's usual incubation timeline is around 38 to 40 days, according to the nonprofit.

There’s still time for the second egg to show signs of hatching, and a pip could be confirmed in the coming days.

What we know

Jenny Voisard, the organization’s media manager, told LAist earlier this week that hatching is an arduous process for chicks that takes some time.

For example, last season, the first chick hatched more than a day after the initial pip was confirmed, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley records. The second chick hatched about a day after pipping as well, and the third chick worked its way out into the world about two days after the first crack was confirmed.

The chicks may look like little blobs of gray fluff at first, but they grow quickly, as fans saw with Jackie and Shadow’s eaglets last year. One of last season’s trio of chicks, believed to be the eldest and most dominant sibling, died during a winter storm within weeks of hatching.

In March 2025, Jackie and Shadow welcomed two eaglet chicks with one remaining egg in their nest.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Jackie and Shadow's three chicks on March 7, 2025. One of the chicks later died, while Sunny and Gizmo successfully fledged a few months later.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Jackie and Shadow's eaglets during a feeding of fish in April 2025.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Sunny and Gizmo in Big Bear's famous bald eagle nest on Friday, April 18, 2025.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Viewers watched as the surviving eaglets, Sunny and Gizmo, grew from a few ounces to several pounds in a matter of months before fledging, or taking their first flight away from the nest, last June.

But any chicks arriving this season will have to learn how to feed before they can fly.

The initial meals may be a bit awkward while the chicks learn to sit up straight. Jackie and Shadow could start feeding the chicks the same day they hatch, typically tearing off pieces of fish or raw meat and holding it up to their beaks.

Bald eagles don’t regurgitate food for their young, unlike other birds. But the feathered parents do pass along a "substantial amount of saliva” full of electrolytes and antibodies to their chicks during feedings, according to the nonprofit.

Voisard said new life coming to the nest is a reminder “why it’s so important to conserve their lands.”

Big Bear fundraiser

Friends of Big Bear Valley is trying to raise $10 million by the end of July to purchase land pegged for a planned housing project that some say would harm rare plants and wildlife in the area, including bald eagles.

You can learn more about the fundraiser here.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta provided guidance this week to childcare providers on new legal requirements to protect children and their families from immigration enforcement activities.

Under a new law that went into effect this year, childcare providers are not allowed to collect information about a child's or family member’s immigration status, unless necessary under state or federal law. Bonta’s office says there currently is no such requirement, though that could change with federal programs like Head Start.

“Childcare and preschool facilities should be safe and secure spaces so children can grow, learn and simply be children,” Bonta said in a statement.

His office says daycare centers also should not keep information about a formerly enrolled child longer than is required by state law.

The new law also requires facilities to inform the attorney general’s office and the state’s licensing agency if they get any requests for information from law enforcement related to immigration enforcement.

Facilities also must ask families to regularly update a child’s emergency contact information to make sure someone can be reached in case a parent is detained by federal immigration officials.

The Santa Ana winds are here to welcome us into the weekend, bringing warmer temperatures.

The winds will reach Point Mugu to the Santa Clarita Valley, down to Orange County and parts of the Inland Empire valleys and foothills east of the 5 Freeway.

Peak gusts are expected to reach 35 to 55 mph. The western San Gabriel Mountains, Highway 14 corridor, Santa Susana Mountains and the western Santa Monica Mountains are under a high wind warning until 6 p.m., when gusts could reach 65 mph.

As for temperatures, highs for L.A. County beaches will reach the upper 70s and up to the low 80s for inland areas.

Parts of Orange County and Coachella Valley will see temperatures in the mid- to upper 80s, with the warmest areas expected to reach 88 degrees.