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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“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.

Coming into the first major mayoral debate, Los Angeles city resident Sapna Suresh wanted to understand how the potential alternatives to incumbent Mayor Karen Bass diagnose the problems the city is facing.

For the three candidates who attended the debate Monday, one diagnosis was clear: L.A. isn’t the city it could be.

• Adam Miller, founder of a homelessness nonprofit and self-described lifelong Democrat, said the city is “broken,” physically and figuratively.
• Nithya Raman, an L.A. city councilwoman, said the city is “challenged.”
• Rae Huang, a Presbyterian minister, community organizer and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, said L.A. needs “new and fresh leadership.”

The candidates, among 40 to qualify for the June primary, answered questions about housing and transportation over the course of about an hour and a half in downtown L.A. The debate was organized by groups Streets for All and Housing Action Coalition. Streets for All founder Michael Schneider and Housing Action Coalition’s Southern California Director Jesse Zwick moderated.

Bass declined the invitation to participate. Spencer Pratt, another candidate surfacing high in polling, was invited but did not attend. The debate came on the heels of a poll released Sunday from UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times that showed her leading the crowded field, even while many voters say they view her unfavorably.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass delivers her State of the City address from City Hall in Los Angeles on April 15, 2024.

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The poll found Bass had about 25% of support from likely voters. Raman, who entered the race just two months ago, is polling at 17%. Pratt, a former reality TV star, has 14% of support from those polled. Huang and Miller are each polling below 10%.

Takeaways from attendees

Truman Segal and Jacob Wasserman, whom LAist interviewed together, said they admired Huang’s passion, grassroots campaign and community-focused policies.

Ultimately, Suresh, who'd come to hear the candidates take on the state of the city, left the debate feeling confident about her pre-existing preference for Raman.

Councilmember Nithya Raman photographed in her home.

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“She was able to identify the problem, diagnose it, articulate a vision for how she would solve it, and point to specifics she’s done in her legislative career,” Suresh said.

Annika Wines said she appreciated the values Huang shared, but concluded that she’s “running on buzzwords.”

“I felt Nithya was running on a campaign platform with actual realized goals … and an actual plan about how she was going to attain more affordable housing, more housing in general, safer streets, more access to transportation,” Wines said.

Watch the full debate

Top issues covered

Measure ULA

A majority of city voters in 2022 approved Measure ULA, which taxes high-value real estate sales. The goal of the tax, commonly referred to as the “mansion tax,” is to raise funds for renters’ aid and development of affordable housing, though studies from academics and researchers have shown it has reduced multi-family housing production in the city.

The tax has been a high-profile subject in L.A. City Council, which earlier this month voted to form an ad hoc committee to explore reforms to Measure ULA.

When asked about their positions on the initiative, Raman invoked the reforms she tried, but failed, to get on the June ballot. She argued those reforms, including an exemption from the tax on apartment buildings built in the last 15 years, would still retain most of the revenue funding for eviction defense and affordable housing production.

“This is where Nithya and I disagree greatly,” Huang said, alleging that Raman, in concert with Bass, is “dangling the idea that developers will get a tax break” and supported revisions to the law without community input.

Raman pushed back on Huang, saying she worked with the tax’s proponents, labor groups and developers to come up with reforms.

Rae Huang is among those running for mayor of Los Angeles

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Courtesy Huang campaign website

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Miller said the law needs to be “greatly reformed” and has caused developers to shy away from investing in the city.

LAX management

The candidates also differed on management of Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency responsible for LAX. The agency has been criticized for pursuing a major roadways project with one of the developers working on the embattled Automated People Mover, which has suffered years of delays and nearly a billion dollars in budget overruns.

Raman faulted “disinterest from the leadership in City Hall” for the issues facing Los Angeles World Airports and said she’d use her position as mayor to make changes to airport leadership when projects aren’t done on time.

Immediately, Huang asked why Raman hasn’t pushed for changes in her time on council.

Raman retorted with a list of initiatives she pushed “over the areas that [she has] real control over.” Raman, who heads the city council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, specifically spoke about lowering annual rent increases.

Traffic fatalities

In 2025, 6% fewer Angelenos died in traffic fatalities than the year prior. Still, with 290 traffic deaths in the city last year, according to police data, L.A. is far from the goal it set a decade ago to reach zero such deaths.

When asked about their support for cameras that automatically issue tickets to drivers who run red lights, Huang was at first stumped but eventually said she doesn’t support technology that surveils the community.

Raman and Miller disagreed with Huang, saying L.A. should reinstate a red light camera program, which local leaders canceled back in 2011.

Tech entrepreneur Adam Miller is among those running for mayor of Los Angeles

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Courtesy Miller campaign

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“Speeding kills, and automated enforcement is one tool in our toolkit to be able to address this,” Raman said. “ I would make sure that any automated enforcement tool that we're using will not share data, will not add to surveillance, but merely increase safety, and that's totally possible to do.”

Housing crisis

All three of the candidates largely fell on the same page about:

• The need to increase housing production
• Shortcomings of Bass’ signature homelessness program, Inside Safe,
• The need to boost the budget for street and sidewalk-focused city departments.

Huang and Raman emphasized how they’d both use the city’s four Metro Board seats to shepherd through timely regional transit projects. Huang committed to appointing transit riders rather than politicians as decision makers for the countywide transportation agency.

“ We need to ensure that our Metro Board is going to be actually driven by people who ride it,” Huang said.

Huang and Raman both also emphasized the need for multi-year budget plans to ensure infrastructure projects have dedicated funding to get done.

Other topics covered include congestion pricing, Executive Directive One and LADWP-related housing delays. You can watch the entire debate here.

Where was Mayor Bass?

A Bass campaign spokesperson said last week that the mayor “can’t participate in every debate invitation” but is “eager to discuss her record of changing L.A. and her vision for the future of Los Angeles."

The spokesperson did not answer follow-up questions about the reason for Bass’ absence. A regular Friday email from Bass’ communications office that details the mayor’s public events said she would be traveling out of state Monday and returning Tuesday morning.

For debate attendee Mikey Reid, the mayor’s absence could be seen as a positive.

“ We want to have multiple candidates taking her to task for certain shortcomings, but I felt it ultimately worked in the candidates’ favor in a way that they were able to just articulate their vision without necessarily only centering it on negatives,” Reid said.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California sued the Trump administration Monday to block what it says is an unprecedented power grab: using emergency authority to force the restart of an offshore oil operation shut down more than a decade ago.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, argues a March 13 order by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright oversteps his authority under the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era law.

“No matter how much President Trump may claim there's a so-called national energy emergency — it's just not true,” Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters. “The U.S. already produces significantly more oil and gas than we use — it's a completely fabricated claim intended to curry favor with the oil industry.”

The legal fight pits the Trump administration and Sable Offshore Corp. against California officials and environmental groups — and comes as fuel prices jump in the wake of the Iran conflict. Sable, which bought the system from ExxonMobil in 2024, has told investors that production could increase from about 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to more than 50,000 if it restarts, sending oil to refineries in Los Angeles, Bakersfield and the Bay Area.

California argues the emergency powers law is meant to prioritize contracts during emergencies — not to override state law or force a pipeline restart. The state says the administration failed to meet the law’s basic requirements, including showing an actual energy shortage.

Wright’s order marked the most aggressive federal intervention yet in a yearslong dispute. A March 3 legal opinion from the U.S. Justice Department had laid the groundwork, concluding that the emergency order could preempt state law — and even override a 2020 federal consent decree requiring approval from the California State Fire Marshal before the pipeline can restart.

Environmental groups and experts have argued that forcing the pipeline back into production would not lower gasoline prices but would put coastal wildlife at risk and set a troubling precedent for federal power over state law. The Trump administration has long sought to expand offshore oil leasing along the West Coast, which has drawn fierce opposition in California.

Sable is facing mounting legal pressure on multiple fronts. In December, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration ruled that the infrastructure qualifies as an interstate pipeline and issued an emergency permit approving a restart plan — a move environmental groups and the state of California challenged. That case is pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In February, a Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge ordered the pipeline to remain shut down, ruling that earlier federal intervention was not enough to override an injunction requiring Sable to obtain state approvals before restarting.

Representatives for Sable, the Energy Department and the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

USC canceled a gubernatorial debate set to be held on March 24 after widespread claims that the debate purposefully left out candidates of color.

The USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future was organizing the debate, with ABC/KABC Los Angeles and Univision set to co-host and televise in both English and Spanish. Many of the Democratic candidates, including those who were invited, have been calling for the inclusion of all candidates regardless of their positioning in USC’s debate criteria formula.

"USC vigorously defends the independence, objectivity and integrity of USC Professor Christian Grose, whose data-driven candidate viability formula is based on extensive research and enjoys broad academic support,” said a USC statement sent to the media late Monday night. “At the same time, we recognize that concerns about the selection criteria for tomorrow’s gubernatorial debate have created a significant distraction from the issues that matter to voters.

“Unfortunately, USC and KABC have not been able to reach an agreement on expanding the number of candidates at tomorrow’s debate. As a result, USC has made the difficult decision to cancel tomorrow’s debate and will look for other opportunities to educate voters on the candidates and issues."

Controversy surrounding the debate began as early as March 16, when former Human and Health Services Secretary and candidate for governor Xavier Becerra sent letters to USC, ABC7 and Univision calling the debate criteria a “patently arbitrary, spontaneous qualification formula.”

The former California Attorney General took issue with no candidates of color being invited to participate, while a white candidate, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, was invited despite polling lower than Becerra and others.

The Democrats who were invited — Mahan, Rep. Eric Swalwell and former Rep. Katie Porter — all took to social media in the last week calling on USC to expand its debate to include all of the Democratic candidates.

Also invited to the debate were political commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, both Republicans who are polling fairly high.

Becerra took the debate cancellation as a win, saying in an X post late Monday night that “hopefully next time it’s done right.”

“Thank you to everyone who stood up, raised hell and demanded justice,” reads the post. “Never give up when you’re fighting for fairness!”

The Los Angeles Unified School District Board voted unanimously Tuesday to rename two campuses named after César Chávez by fall 2026 and to fund the removal of murals and any other commemorations of the disgraced labor leader at other schools.

A New York Times investigation published last week found Chávez sexually abused girls and women including United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta.

Board Member Kelly Gonez introduced the resolution.

“These heart-wrenching stories represent a betrayal for so many of us and yet they resonate with many survivors and many women who have experienced this as girls and in our adulthood including myself,” Gonez said through tears.

Board Vice President Rocío Rivas co-authored the resolution.

“This is not an easy moment, but it’s a necessary one,” Rivas said.

What comes next?

The board committed to working with the communities surrounding César Chávez Learning Academies in San Fernando and César Chávez Elementary School in El Sereno to identify new names that “reflect the District’s values of equity, justice, and community leadership.”

The district will also recognize March 31 as Farm Workers Day this year and in future calendars.

Read the resolution and go deeper to see how educators are responding to the allegations.