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.

The number of homicides in the city of Los Angeles fell by 19% last year, the lowest level in decades, according to a police department report that cited several factors for the decline, including violence reduction strategies and partnerships with community organizations.

There were 230 homicides in the city in 2025, 54 fewer than the previous year, said police Chief Jim McDonnell at a Thursday morning news conference.

The report also shows fewer people were shot citywide, including those who were injured but not killed. Shooting victims were down from 981 to 889, an 8% drop.

Gang-related homicides were down 4%.

The chief credited more effective policing for the crime drop, but acknowledged it's not the only factor.

“Policing plays a critical role in public safety but it is one of a much larger system,” McDonnell said. “Crime trends are influenced by many factors beyond policing, including economic conditions, population changes, substance abuse, homelessness, legislative decisions and access to services.”

Traffic deaths decline

Homicides involving unhoused people remained a major problem, rising 20% last year to 61, according to the LAPD.

The department reported 290 fatal traffic crashes, a decline from the 302 the previous year. Of those, 97 were vehicular manslaughter cases, according to the Police Department.

The report notes traffic deaths are still outpacing homicides across the city.

Citywide, property crimes also fell last year. There were 85,170 theft and other crimes last year compared to more than 205,000 forty years ago.

While crime is generally down, the LAPD has the fewest officers it has had in more than a decade. But its budget still comprises more than half the general fund budget.

“When we invest in our law enforcement, we see safer neighborhoods and real results,” said City Councilmember John Lee, who joined McDonnell at the news conference.

L.A.’s crime picture follows state and national trends. After a spike during the early days of the pandemic, homicides are down nationwide.

LAist has reached out to criminologists for comment, but so far has not received responses.

Reaction to immigration raids

During the news conference, McDonnell addressed concerns that immigrant communities would be less inclined to report crimes and cooperate with police given the tactics of federal immigration agents.

That was “our fear,” McDonnell said.

“While there may have been some lack of reporting, I think we’re on track going in the right direction and trying to regain support in communities that may have waned or been lost,” he said.

While he did not comment directly on the killing of two people by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, the chief was critical of ICE tactics.

“What we’ve seen since June here in Los Angeles and seen across the country, we’re as frustrated as everybody else about the way that’s being done,” McDonnell said.

He said the LAPD will continue its policy prohibiting cooperation with immigration authorities.

This story was originally published by The LA Local on Jan. 29, 2026.

Jonathan Hale has been painting crosswalks at some of the city’s most dangerous intersections for over a year, turning neglected streets into quiet acts of protest and prevention. That work led to his arrest last fall on vandalism — a moment caught on video that went viral.

So far, the city isn’t pursuing a misdemeanor charge, and the incident gave Hale a chance to present his vision for a safer Los Angeles to Mayor Karen Bass’ office. Now, he’s proposing an unusual way for the city to make his guerrilla crosswalks legal: permitted painting parties.

“We’re arguing for a legal mechanism. We should be able to permit street closures, as if you were permitting a block party, and then we can actually do the thing,” Hale told The LA Local. “We can make these (crosswalks) while the street is closed. We can add these compliance lines, and it would be like some sort of city-sanctioned street art program. We really want this to be like an alley oop for the city.”

He met with the mayor’s office to discuss this proposal in December as the lead of the pedestrian advocacy group People’s Vision Zero. His ultimate goal is to find a legal pathway for residents like him to paint crosswalks.

His group’s name is a play on the Vision Zero initiative, launched by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2015 to eliminate traffic deaths over the next decade.

“I got the idea because I’m a pedestrian — we all are,” Hale said. “I started painting crosswalks to see whether this could be a way to raise awareness around the issue and create lasting change. It’s gratifying. You get to be outside and meet people in your community and organize.”

In their proposal to the mayor’s office, People’s Vision Zero presents a “block party” model for installing crosswalks, led by residents who could follow specific state standards, as a low-cost way to address dangerous streets while working with city agencies, rather than waiting years for formal infrastructure projects to move forward.

“I think they see the momentum in the moment,” Hale said about the city. “We really want this to be like an alley-oop for the city. But I think it’s going to be unbelievably hard. It’s going to require the coordination of so many different bureaucratic organs. But we want to do it.”

Sergio Godinez, a spokesperson for Mayor Bass, confirmed that the mayor’s office has met with Hale and city departments “to explore solutions that are innovative and will expedite crosswalk installations across Los Angeles.”

“Mayor Bass believes that streets and sidewalks should be safe and accessible for all Angelenos, no matter how they travel,” Godinez said. “The City will continue to install crosswalks that comply with federal, state, and local regulations.”

Hale argues that Los Angeles’ official Vision Zero program has failed to meet its goal. In 2024, there were 303 traffic deaths in Los Angeles and 290 last year, according to the latest data from the Los Angeles Police Department.

Hale started his advocacy work with the activist group Crosswalk Collective LA, which taught him most of what he knows about crosswalks, including how to design them within city code and use them to raise awareness about safer streets.

“We would love to see some sort of official sanctioning of this within guidelines,” Hale said. “That would be the ultimate goal because crosswalks alone aren’t going to change anything. We’re just adding a crosswalk for drivers to more easily see pedestrians, but that’s not going to solve traffic violence on its own.”

For years, various groups have been calling attention to Los Angeles’ most dangerous intersections. They called out the city’s slow response, such as the intersection of New Hampshire Avenue and 4th Street in Koreatown, where a driver killed 9-year-old Nadir Gavarrete last summer. The city installed a temporary traffic circle, signage and crosswalks years after securing funding and after the boy’s death.

The High-Injury Network from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, a map of streets with disproportionately high rates of collisions and fatalities, makes it easier to identify these dangerous areas. Activists like those in the Crosswalk Collective have emphasized the urgent need for both community-led interventions and meaningful city action to make streets safer.

The group has drawn increased attention on Instagram in recent weeks after Hale was arrested and cited in December for painting a crosswalk in Westwood. In the video that went viral, Hale is seen being handcuffed by an officer as bystanders shout, “Let him go, he’s not doing anything.”

Hale was cited for “vandalism on city property” and received a misdemeanor for the offense that was later dropped.

Not long after, Hale also started building benches that he wants to place around the community.

Michael Jenkins, an attorney and lecturer at USC Gould School of Law, said that since the city of Los Angeles owns the street, nobody can make a permanent marking on it — only the city government can authorize that.

Jenkins added that crosswalk installation is governed by a formal city process and professional traffic safety standards, not individual judgment. “Governments don’t install crosswalks willy-nilly. They don’t just do it based on a whim,” he said, noting that traffic engineers evaluate whether a crosswalk is necessary and appropriate based on established criteria.

As a result, residents “cannot simply decide in their judgment that they believe the street is dangerous to pedestrians and then paint a crosswalk on the street” outside the required approval process. Those who painted an unauthorized crosswalk largely conceded their actions were illegal, Jenkins said, describing it as civil disobedience or political protest, but added the action was “obviously not allowed.”

For now, Hale has paused painting crosswalks, but he hasn’t stopped advocating for safer streets.

Crosswalks alone won’t solve the city’s pedestrian safety problems, he says, but he thinks they can make a meaningful difference — and he has other ideas as well.

“Imagine using something like daylighting — the red-curb areas near intersections — and adding planter boxes to narrow them. That would make the intersections themselves narrower and safer,” Hale said.

Hale can envision a safer version of Los Angeles. He just needs to convince the city it will take a group effort.

If you've ever found yourself in Santa Monica at dusk, cruising along the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Lincoln Boulevard, there's a good chance the bright baby blue glow of Mel's Drive-In has caught your eye.

With its imposing, tuxedo-wearing penguin perched atop the neon sign, the iconic Southern California diner is a vivid example of mid-20th-century Googie-style architecture. It also marks the official terminus of historic Route 66, the famed roadway connecting Chicago to the Pacific Ocean, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary.

The history

The building dates back to 1959, when it housed the Penguin Coffee Shop, serving cheeseburgers and malts — hence the penguin sign — to hungry travelers. In 1991, it was converted into a more mundate dental office, until 2016, when the Weiss family — third-generation owners of the Mel's Drive-In diner chain founded in San Francisco — purchased and restored the property.

The original Mel's Drive-In, started by Mel Weiss in 1947, was one of the pioneers the American drive-in concept, offering carhop service where food orders were delivered directly to customers in their vehicles. The restaurant made a lasting impression on many, including director George Lucas, who featured it prominently in his 1973 film American Graffiti.

Colton and Chasen Weiss, grandsons of Mel, recall hearing from their grandfather that Lucas "was always a big Mel's fan" and asked to film there. Their grandfather was reluctant but agreed.

"It made Mel's famous and made him famous," Colton said, immediately cementing the restaurant's place in Southern California's cultural landscape. There are now Mel's Drive-In locations in Sherman Oaks and West Hollywood.

Googie explained

Architectural rendering of the Penguin Coffee Shop at Lincoln and Olympic boulevards by architects Louis Armet and Eldon Davis, September 8, 1959. The Weiss family used original plans to guide their restoration.

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Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives

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The style is named after the Googie coffee shop designed by the same architects, Louis Armet and Eldon Davis, in downtown Los Angeles in 1949. Ruthann Lehrer, an architectural historian and member of the Santa Monica Conservancy, describes the style as featuring "dramatic cantilevered roofs and plate glass windows...designed to attract passing motorists."

Of the 4,000 buildings Armet and Davis designed with glowing neon and angular forms, only a handful survive, most notably Norm's in West Hollywood and Pann's in Westchester.

The Penguin Coffee Shop illuminated at night in the 1960s. The building's dramatic Googie architecture was designed to attract passing motorists with glowing neon and angular forms.

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The aesthetic echoed the era's car design. "If you look at an old '55 Chevy...those big tail fins...you get that same kind of look and feel as a Googie building," Colton explained.

"Los Angeles really wanted to be a city of the future," said Nina Fresco, also of the Conservancy. Googie was the city's playful answer, distinct from Route 66's roadside vernacular elsewhere.

The restoration

In 2016, after the dental office closed, the Weiss family bought the building. They'd known about the Penguin Cafe's history because they had often driven past the building and seen the penguin sign.

But after 25 years as a dental office, "the whole infrastructure of that building was not a restaurant anymore," Colton said, with super-low ceilings and white stucco walls. It wasn't until someone used a sledgehammer to break through the drywall that they uncovered the original rock facade, which he described as "like unearthing some ancient artifact."

Realizing what they had, the Weiss family enlisted the help of Googie experts and preservationists Adriene Biondo and Chris Nichols, who secured the original plans for the Penguin Coffee Shop. This allowed them to restore as much of the authentic design as possible, including the iconic ball-and-teardrop light fixtures in the dining area and the exterior landscaping.

The original Penguin Coffee Shop interior featured a dramatic rock facade and teardrop lighting fixtures. During restoration, the Weiss family discovered this rock wall hidden behind drywall, describing it as "like unearthing some ancient artifact.

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Courtesy Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives

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The restoration took two years. Upon opening in 2018, the restoration immediately drew attention from preservationists and the community, earning the Santa Monica Conservancy Historic Preservation Award in 2019.

According to Lehrer, Mel's is one of the only remaining Googie buildings in Santa Monica — what Fresco calls "the last bird standing" — as others have been demolished to make way for mixed-use development.

"So many locations are getting torn down...building high rises...it's losing a lot of its aesthetic. It's sad to see," Colton said. In Los Angeles, small-scale buildings face an uncertain fate as the land beneath them becomes increasingly valuable.

Full circle

The diner has since become known for its high-quality diner food, and as a photogenic stop for tourists taking selfies at the end of Route 66. When the Weiss family first arrived, there were no signs marking its unique location. The city installed them after Mel's opened — as if the official terminus had been waiting for the right destination. Now, through a partnership with the Route 66 Society, the diner hands out certificates of completion to road trippers who've made the journey from Chicago.

The interior of Mel's Drive-In features restored ball-shaped light fixtures and terrazzo floors that echo the original 1959 Penguin Coffee Shop design.

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Gab Chabrán

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Colton recalls a sunburned man in his 70s who'd driven the entire route in his 1960s Corvette Stingray, bucket list complete, beaming as he received his certificate. "It's a really special place, and it is special to me," Colton said. "So that definitely means it's special to everybody else."

That baby blue glow is still doing exactly what it was designed to do all those years ago: catching the eye of passing motorists.

A taxpayer-funded program that provides unhoused people with tents, meals, bathrooms and around-the-clock security in a South L.A. parking lot will close on Jan. 31, according to the nonprofit that operates it.

Urban Alchemy is terminating a $1.2 million contract with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to run the program through the current budget year, which ends in June.

The San Francisco-based nonprofit says it’s not getting enough funding under that agreement to keep the site open.

“The economics of the contract don’t work,” an Urban Alchemy representative told LAist. “It reached a point where we started losing money on it, and we had to make the decision about what’s best for our organization.”

The Lincoln Safe Sleep Village on South Central Avenue was one of only a handful of similar government-sanctioned tent encampments operating around the state.

Regional homelessness officials and a federal judge raised concerns about the Safe Sleep Village last year after observers found the site was operating at half capacity while the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, was paying it to operate at full capacity.

Urban Alchemy said a portion of the site was closed in 2024 because LAHSA and the city of L.A. instructed it to do so.

Now that the program is closing down entirely, city and LAHSA officials are scrambling to transfer remaining residents to other shelters.

People living at the site first learned of the impending evictions late last week, according to multiple residents interviewed by LAist. One of them, Miles Johnson, said he’d been living there with his girlfriend for 10 months.

“ We just got moved,” he said. “We just got put out. All our stuff is still in bags.”

LAHSA says it has been working to secure alternative shelter placements for 25 people who were living at the Safe Sleep Village.

Ahmad Chapman, a spokesperson for LAHSA, said the agency expects to make housing offers to all remaining participants before the closure.

The main entrance to the Lincoln Avenue Safe Sleep Village, located in a parking lot in South L.A.

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Residents displaced

The Lincoln Safe Sleep Village is located near the intersection of South Central Avenue and East 25th Street in a parking lot next to the historic Lincoln Theater. It’s in Councilmember Curren Price’s ninth district.

A South L.A. nonprofit called the Coalition for Responsible Community Development purchased the property in 2020 using state Project HomeKey funds. It has plans to build a 60-unit affordable housing complex there soon.

Price’s office told LAist this week that news of Urban Alchemy ending its contract to run the site came as a surprise.

“Until this recent news, our expectation was to transition any remaining residents by the end of this year,” Price’s communications director Angelina Valencia-Dumarot told LAist. “This sudden change disrupts that plan and creates uncertainty for unhoused neighbors currently at the site.”

On Tuesday afternoon, city of L.A. crisis response teams were transporting several residents and their belongings from the Safe Sleep Village to other nearby open shelter beds.

“They dumped me off at a place and I almost didn't get a bed,” James Rudy told LAist. “This was all last minute. I was afraid they were going to screw me.”

He said he was forced to throw away most of his clothing and belongings during the move. Rudy is now staying at a shelter 5 miles away called Testimonial Community Love Center, where clients are required to leave each day between 8:45 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., he said, adding that he preferred the tent village.

“The place we left wasn’t that bad.” Rudy said. “I was in a tent, but at least I was able to do what I needed to do. Here it’s not really practical.”

Tracy Wallace told LAist on Tuesday that her husband had been transported to another shelter, and she was waiting to reunite with him there.

“We're gonna be apart, not sleeping together,” she said. “Because one side is for men and the other side is for women, but that's still fine.”

Urban Alchemy said it was making former residents’ well-being a top priority. The organization estimated that, as of this Wednesday, there were seven residents still waiting on alternative placements.

“As we wind down our operations at this site, we appreciate the efforts underway to help guests move to safe, supportive places.” spokesperson Jess Montejano said in a statement.

Urban Alchemy told LAist that five of its 15 workers were laid off this week. Ten have been transferred to work in other Urban Alchemy projects, and the organization is working to connect the laid-off employees to other jobs, Urban Alchemy said.

The nonprofit bills itself as a social enterprise, hiring mostly formerly incarcerated people.

Some displaced residents from the Lincoln Safe Sleep Village were transported to alternative shelters on Tuesday.

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Cutting ties with LAHSA

LAHSA had contracted with Urban Alchemy to operate the Safe Sleep Village since 2022. Annual funding for the site was reduced from $2.3 million last budget year to $1.2 million this year.

The latter amount was supposed to pay for 46 tent spaces. But Urban Alchemy said the contract didn’t cover its fixed costs.

“We have to provide the staff no matter what, per the terms of the contract, whether it’s one person or 46,” an Urban Alchemy representative said. “We tried to work with [LAHSA] often, to try to find a way for it to pencil, and it just wasn’t the case.”

Urban Alchemy said LAHSA “arbitrarily changed its funding formula,” resulting in the nonprofit losing nearly $1 million on the contract.

The nonprofit first notified LAHSA on Dec. 22 that it planned to terminate the contract, both parties confirmed to LAist.

According to LAHSA payment records, Urban Alchemy spent about 69% of its budget on personnel for the 2022-23 budget year. Payroll records for February 2024 showed an average of eight staff members working at the site around-the-clock.

Last Thursday, one month after notifying LAHSA about the closure, Urban Alchemy’s director of operations in L.A. emailed city and LAHSA staff, demanding help rehousing residents.

“Given the urgency of the closure date, ongoing uncertainty places guests and frontline staff in an untenable position,” Tim Kornegay wrote in a Jan. 22 email. “Leadership action is critically needed now to prevent avoidable harm.”

The next day, LAHSA representatives told Urban Alchemy about a transfer plan for the people still living at that Safe Sleep site, the agency said.

Early this week, Mayor Karen Bass’s office and Price’s office told LAist they were aware of the situation and supported LAHSA’s work to prevent people from winding up with nowhere to go.

City of Los Angeles crisis teams helped transport residents to new shelter locations before the closure.

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A federal judge weighs in

Months before Urban Alchemy announced it would shut down the South L.A. site, questions about its funding and capacity made their way to a federal judge.

The situation emerged as the city of L.A. is under a court order to provide more shelter for unhoused Angelenos and LAHSA is under scrutiny for having failed to properly manage hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with service providers like Urban Alchemy.

Last year, LAHSA paid the nonprofit $2.3 million based on inaccurate data about the site’s capacity, records show. On paper, Urban Alchemy had 88 available beds on site. In reality, half that many were available.

Officials from the Homeless Services Authority had instructed the nonprofit in April 2024 to close down operations in one of two converted parking lots, according to emails reviewed by LAist. Dozens of plywood tent platforms were removed, but LAHSA did not update the capacity data or funding for the site until more than one year later.

The city of L.A. and LAHSA continued to report outdated capacity data about the South L.A. tent program to a judge overseeing a settlement that requires the city to open 13,000 new shelter beds by next June.

In November, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter described the situation as “obvious fraud.”

Michele Martinez, a special master appointed to help enforce the terms of the settlement, visited the site in June and found that it appeared to be operating at half capacity. She then tried to verify the number of beds available at the site with city officials, but did not get an answer, Carter said at a November court hearing.

The city of L.A. corrected the information reported to the judge after one member of LAHSA’s governing board, the LAHSA Commission, visited the site and reported what he saw there.

Commissioner Justin Szlasa said he had voted to approve millions in funding for Urban Alchemy last year with the understanding that the South L.A. space could accommodate 88 people. But when he visited in May 2025, he saw that half of it was closed.

Szlasa filed a public records request with LAHSA in September to obtain the contracts and payment details for the Urban Alchemy site, but he has not yet received a full response, he said.

He told LAist he’s been asking for an evaluation of the contract to be put on the LAHSA Commission’s agenda.

Urban Alchemy does not have any remaining contracts with LAHSA, but the organization runs a tent village in Culver City and has some other contracts with the city of L.A.

The organization recently pulled out of operating a large homeless shelter in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district after the nonprofit said it did not feel "supported" by the city amid scrutiny over shelter finances.