A man walks past tents in the shadow of downtown L.A. skyscrapers.
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Frederic J. Brown
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AFP via Getty Images
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Topline:
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.
Why now: Results of the 2025 event, released Monday, show homelessness dropped by 3.4% in the city of L.A. and by 4% countywide in 2025, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA. This includes the number of people in shelters and those sleeping outdoors.
Why it matters: 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.
The backstory: 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.
Read on ... for more on the results of the count.
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.
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Homelessness in LA region dropped for the second time in two years, according to annual count
" 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.
Destiny Torres
is LAist's general assignment reporter and brings you the top news you need for the day.
Published May 4, 2026 1:21 PM
The city of Los Angeles is hosting more than 100 World Cup watch parties at more than a dozen park sites, including MacArthur Park.
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Genaro Molina
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Getty Images
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Topline:
The city of Los Angeles will host more than 100 World Cup watch parties for free this summer during the global tournament.
Officials say: L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement that the idea is for all Los Angeles residents to enjoy World Cup festivities.
Background: Los Angeles will host eight FIFA World Cup matches this summer at SoFi Stadium, including the USA’s opening match against Paraguay on June 12. Tickets to the game and others have drawn criticism for sky-high price tags.
Read on … for how to participate.
Los Angeles will host more than 100 World Cup watch parties for free this summer during the global tournament through its “Kick it in the Park” program.
The parties are scattered across the city at more than a dozen recreation centers.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement that the idea is for all Los Angeles residents to enjoy World Cup festivities.
“We are bringing the matches to every community in Los Angeles with free events that the whole family can enjoy," Bass said. "This moment belongs to all Angelenos, and we’re making sure of that."
L.A. will host eight FIFA World Cup matches this summer at SoFi Stadium, including the USA’s opening match against Paraguay on June 12. Tickets to the game and others have drawn criticism for sky-high price tags.
What to know
The city’s event series will take place throughout the duration of the World Cup tournament, between June 11 and July 19. Two to four rotating park sites will be activated on each of the match days.
Each city district could put its own spin on the event, but each watch party is guaranteed to have a big screen, soccer clinics and family fun zones.
Events will take place at 18 park sites, including MacArthur Park, Northridge Recreation Center, Echo Park Lake and more.
Attendees are recommended to bring blankets, water, snacks and sunscreen.
How do I participate?
Unlike the official FIFA Fan Fests and Fan Zones, no registration or ticket purchase is required. Up to a thousand soccer fans can show up to any watch party site with a blanket or chairs.
Metro adds three new stations to the D Line on Friday.
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Marina Peña
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The LA Local
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Topline:
LACMA, The Grove and the Beverly Center will soon be just a few stops away for many Angelenos after Metro adds three new stations to the D Line on Friday. To mark the launch, Metro will host multiple events at each station in collaboration with local businesses.
About the expansion: The extension will add new stops after the Wilshire/Western station in Koreatown, including stations at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega. The three stations are expected to bring in about 16,200 new daily riders to the system, according to Metro.
Read on . . . for information on a range of activities and events at each of the new stations, including farmers markets, salsa classes and coffee, during the first 90 days after the opening on May 8.
LACMA, The Grove and the Beverly Center will soon be just a few stops away for many Angelenos after Metro adds three new stations to the D Line on Friday, May 8. To mark the launch, Metro will host multiple events at each station in collaboration with local businesses.
The extension will add new stops after the Wilshire/Western station in Koreatown, including stations at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega.
Metro riders and visitors will be able to check out a range of activities and events at each of the new stations, including farmers markets, salsa classes and coffee, during the first 90 days after the opening on May 8.
The three stations are expected to bring in about 16,200 new daily riders to the system, according to Metro.
LACMA, The Grove and the Beverly Center will soon be just a few stops away for many Angelenos after Metro adds three new stations to the D Line on Friday. To mark the launch, Metro will host multiple events at each station in collaboration with local businesses.
Here are the events taking place after the launch:
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Robert Garrova
explores the weird and secret bits of SoCal that would excite even the most jaded Angelenos. He also covers mental health.
Published May 4, 2026 12:40 PM
Mail-in ballots in their envelopes await processing at the Los Angeles County Registrar Recorders' mail-in ballot processing center at the Pomona Fairplex in Pomona, Oct. 28, 2020.
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Robyn Beck
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Getty Images
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Topline:
Keep an eye out at your mailbox: Today is the deadline for California counties to begin mailing ballots for the upcoming primary election on June 2.
Already have yours? Nice. If you’ve already received your ballot, that’s because some counties got ahead of the deadline to mail them.
Mailing in? The Secretary of State’s Office recommends voters who want to mail in their ballots do that at least one week before Election Day on June 2.
Don’t stress. We’ve got all your voting questions covered with our Voter Game Plan. Our guides have started publishing, but you can jump directly to the L.A. or O.C. guides. Check in regularly to see what’s new.
Jim Steyer accepts an award at the 2024 Shine Global Resilience Awards at Paramount Pictures Studios in Hollywood on Oct. 15, 2024.
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Alberto E. Rodriguez
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Getty Images for Shine Global Inc.
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Topline:
Tom Steyer’s arguably equally famous older brother Jim is a well known force in Sacramento working on tech regulations and protecting kids online. Does that mean he’d have an open ear in the governor’s office on a hot-button issue if Tom wins?
Who is Jim Steyer? The investor-turned-climate activist’s older brother, Jim Steyer, is CEO of the influential California nonprofit Common Sense Media, known for helping parents choose suitable media for kids and warring with the entertainment industry over violent video games. A forceful and well-respected crusader for stricter content regulations for children, Steyer has in recent years turned his attention to social media and artificial intelligence chatbots.
Why it matters: That means if Tom Steyer wins the election, the governor would be close with a prominent advocate of stricter tech laws as Democrats scramble to regulate AI. It would be a shift from current Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has sought to balance AI regulations with a desire to keep technology flourishing in California.
Read on... for more on what this could mean for tech regulation.
Long before billionaire Tom Steyer was pouring record-breaking sums into his run for California governor, the family name held significant sway in Sacramento.
The investor-turned-climate activist’s older brother, Jim Steyer, is CEO of the influential California nonprofit Common Sense Media, known for helping parents choose suitable media for kids and warring with the entertainment industry over violent video games. A forceful and well-respected crusader for stricter content regulations for children, Steyer has in recent years turned his attention to social media and artificial intelligence chatbots.
That means if Tom Steyer wins the election, the governor would be close with a prominent advocate of stricter tech laws as Democrats scramble to regulate AI. It would be a shift from current Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has sought to balance AI regulations with a desire to keep technology flourishing in California.
The Steyer relationship makes some advocates optimistic. Lawmakers and advocates for tech regulations said they expect Jim Steyer not to be shy about his policy views with his brother.
Tom Steyer, one of the Democratic leaders in the race, is running as a progressive and promising to strictly regulate industries like oil, utilities and tech. He has promoted an aggressive tech policy agenda that includes privacy and safety restrictions on AI in the workplace, collecting fees from AI data processing to pay for worker retraining and cash benefits, and requiring safety audits on social media.
In his plan, Tom Steyer cites his work with Common Sense Media, which he says he “helped (his) brother Jim Steyer found and build.”
“After watching the experiment that social media companies ran on our children, I know we cannot let the same thing happen with AI,” his tech policy plan states. “As governor, I will do everything in my power to keep California’s kids safe and prepare them for the AI era.”
A greater say on tech policy?
Tech industry advocates are wary. Common Sense and Big Tech have recently clashed over age limits and industry liability over harmful content, though they have also collaborated on promoting tech education and equitable internet access.
“Certainly Jim Steyer and Common Sense Media will have a greater say,” said Peter Leroe-Munoz, a senior vice president at the business group Bay Area Council. “Common Sense Media would have an outsized influence on California tech policy if Mr. Steyer ends up becoming the governor.”
The council’s membership includes Meta, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI.
The industry balks at the proposal, in part because it would require tech companies to collect mass amounts of user age data, Leroe-Munoz said.
Jim Steyer speaks at the Common Sense Summit on Kids and Families 2025 in San Francisco on March 25, 2025.
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Kimberly White
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Getty Images for Common Sense Media
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Tom Steyer told CalMatters last week that he hasn’t spoken with his brother about social media and AI policy. He also said he doesn’t have an opinion on two bills inspired by Common Sense and OpenAIthis year to more strictly regulate how chatbots interact with minors.
Asked if the relationship with his brother would influence his tech policy, he said he trusts Jim Steyer’s expertise but would not “slavishly follow what my brother says.”
“My brother’s been protecting kids for 50 years and I listen to him, but it’s not like he’s suddenly going to become me,” he said. “I don’t think it is a conflict of interest for him to try and do his job and for me to try and do my job.”
Jim Steyer did not respond to repeated interview requests sent to a Common Sense Media representative. The nonprofit’s spokesperson, Edda Collins Coleman, wrote in an email that while “Jim strongly supports his brother in his personal capacity,” the nonprofit “does not get involved in electoral politics.”
Strange bedfellows
Jim Steyer has praised his younger brother’s candidacy, writing on X after a televised debate last month that Tom Steyer is “the fighter that California needs right now.” He also helped his brother campaign during a short-lived presidential run in 2020.
Jim Steyer founded Common Sense Media in 2003 as a service to rate movies, TV shows, websites and digital content to help parents evaluate their age-appropriateness. Tom Steyer is a member of the board of advisers, and he and his wife Kat have given the nonprofit at least $5 million over the years.
In 2005, the organization pushed hard for a California law banning the sale of violent video games to children without parental consent. The law was later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds.
The organization soon turned toward tech and social media, becoming one of Sacramento’s most influential voices on digital safety for kids and regularly testifying in legislative committee hearings. In 2016, as Common Sense sought to build political clout on children’s issues, Jim Steyer told the San Francisco Chronicle it had “nothing to do with my brother’s political career.” The nonprofit has supported dozens of proposed regulations in the past few years, including a major privacy law passed in 2018 that allows users and customers to have businesses delete personal data collected about them.
Now, Common Sense regularly publishes studies of the effects of social media and AI on child mental health. It also reviews AI tools for parents, rating how they handle young users who express suicidal thoughts or encourage kids to develop healthy human relationships.
Last fall, Newsom vetoed a Common Sense bill that would have created an effective ban on AI chatbots for minors. Lawmakers passed the measure in the wake of a rash of reports of teenagers dying by suicide after developing relationships with ChatGPT, which is made by OpenAI. Some parents, in lawsuits, have alleged that the chatbot encouraged or coached children to harm themselves.
Jim Steyer moved to put a restrictive chatbot measure on the statewide ballot; OpenAI planned to pursue a counter-measure that essentially reflected current law. The pair surprised other regulation advocates in January when they announced they were partnering on a joint ballot measure instead.
Jim Steyer recently drew criticism from fellow advocates when Politico reported that Common Sense was seeking financial support from OpenAI and other companies to form an AI safety institute. Critics worry the partnership would allow the industry to audit itself — especially concerning since many advocates already believed the compromise ballot measure doesn't go far enough.
“Jim might have a harder audience with Tom than another governor.”
— Jamie Court, president of the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, on Jim Steyer’s pull if his brother is elected governor
The discussion has mostly moved to the state Legislature, where lawmakers are advancing two bills based on the compromise measure. They would require tech companies to verify the ages of their users and redesign their platforms to prevent chatbots from encouraging harmful behavior and delivering the sycophantic responses that alarm children’s advocates.
“Children and younger people, they don’t have the ability in the same ways as adults to differentiate between human and quasi-human relationships with these types of technologies,” said bill author Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who used to work at Common Sense Media.
The legislation also requires third-party audits of chatbot safety, which Wicks said the tech industry opposes.
Neither Coleman of Common Sense Media nor a representative for OpenAI responded to inquiries about the potential safety institute.
“We will be as rigorous and honest as ever in evaluating tech products that pose harms to kids and teens and young people’s educational and cognitive development,” Coleman wrote in a statement. “We have long supported third-party child safety audits, which much of the industry opposes.”
Jamie Court, president of the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, has worked with both Steyers on policy and is among those who want more stringent restrictions on tech platforms. He said it “bothers” him that Common Sense, the most powerful advocate on tech policy in Sacramento, may partner with the industry, but he doesn’t begrudge Jim Steyer.
“Jim might have a harder audience with Tom than another governor” on tech policy, Court joked. “Jim’s a little bit more accommodating to the companies because he has to work with them. Tom shoots more from the hip. Tom might be a little more radical.”
