The Brief

This story is part of The Disaster Economy, a Grist series exploring the often chaotic, lucrative world of disaster response and recovery. It was produced by Grist and co-published with LAist. It is published with support from the CO2 Foundation.

Last January, a series of massive wildfires broke out across the Los Angeles area, fueled by high winds and dry temperatures. The fires raged for weeks, incinerating entire neighborhoods in the wealthy Pacific Palisades and in middle-class Altadena. They killed at least 30 people and destroyed at least 10,000 homes.

As the embers cooled, thousands of displaced Angelenos scrambled to find new housing in a rental market that was already among the nation’s toughest. They scoured Zillow and Airbnb for units they could afford on short notice. What they found were sky-high prices gouged by property owners and real estate agents rushing to capitalize on the surge in demand.

Dawn Smith and her family had rented in Altadena for nine years. After their home burned in the Eaton Fire, she combed through online listings for a similar alternative. But options were $10,000 a month or more, triple what she had been paying before the fire.

Eventually, she found a smaller place in Sherman Oaks, more than an hour away, for a still-astonishing $7,800. Her renter’s insurance would cover the difference for a few months, but not for the whole term of the lease. Now, as her insurance comes close to expiring, she and her husband are trying to figure out where to go next.

“The prices were insane,” she told Grist, “but because we had to find somewhere, we rented.”

Controversies over price-gouging play out all over the country in the wake of natural disasters as victims scramble for essential goods. Officials in New Jersey went after price-gouging gas stations after Hurricane Sandy; officials in North Carolina went after scam contractors after Hurricane Florence; and Florida prosecutors said they received more than 100 complaints after last year’s Hurricane Milton.

Most states have laws that prohibit such behavior, but they are difficult to enforce in the chaos of disaster, and some economists contend that they can backfire and cause shortages or hoarding.

But housing is a special case. Overpaying for water or gasoline might be difficult, but overpaying for a rental apartment is a long-term commitment that can lead to bankruptcy or eviction down the road. Concerns about price-gouging of rental apartments have appeared after numerous recent wildfires, including the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise and the 2021 Marshall Fire in Boulder. But prosecutors and public officials have largely failed to deter or punish this illegal behavior.

Two days after wildfires broke out in Los Angeles last January, tech founder Edward Kushins and real estate agent Willie Baronet-Israel hiked the price of a home they were renting out in the waterfront city of Hermosa Beach by 36 percent, likely an increase of more than $1,000. The city is about 15 miles from the Palisades burn zone.

A month later, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the two, citing a state law that makes it a crime to raise prices for food and shelter during an emergency by more than 10%. If found guilty, Kushins and Baronet-Israel would face fines of up to $10,000 and as much as a year in prison.

But the Hermosa Beach listing was just one of thousands that were spiking in price. According to a Washington Post analysis of listings data from the firm RentCast, the average rent in the L.A. area rose by 20% in the two weeks after the fire — double the maximum allowable increase under California law. The home-rental company Airbnb also allowed users to raise prices above legal limits on more than 2,000 properties, despite its assurances that it would block such behavior, according to prosecutors.

The burnt remnants of an apartment building in Altadena, California, following the Eaton Fire in January. Many fire victims struggled to find housing as rents skyrocketed.

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Keith Birmingham

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MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images via Grist

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This lack of enforcement is common after disasters. But this time, it triggered an unprecedented campaign for stricter regulation of housing prices — and one that got results.

“The minimal enforcement that has happened has totally sent a signal,” said Chelsea Kirk, a tenant advocate who organized against price-gouging after the L.A. wildfires. “Landlords expect that enforcement does not exist.”

Three dozen states and the District of Columbia have laws that prohibit merchants from price-gouging during an emergency, but unlike California, which prohibits hikes of more than 10%, many of these laws are vague, prohibiting “excessive” or “unconscionable” increases without specifying what that means or what goods are covered.

“The laws are all over the place,” said Teresa Murray, the lead consumer advocate at the Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit that focuses on consumer protection. Furthermore, enforcement of these laws is minimal — the government can’t be everywhere all at once after a hurricane or flood, and most disaster victims aren’t aware of their rights and don’t track or call out violators.

The stakes are even higher when it comes to housing, which is already in shortage across the country. Around half the nation’s tenants are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent. Wildfires and hurricanes often destroy thousands of homes in quick succession, exacerbating supply crunch in local housing stock.

Research from across the country shows that landlords often hike prices after major fires and floods. Asking prices for rental apartments increased by 25% after the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, for instance, and by 44% in Lahaina following the 2023 Maui wildfires in Hawaiʻi. The increases even hit existing renters: More than a quarter of renters in Boulder said they saw hikes of more than 10% after the 2021 Marshall Fire, and a study of multiple flood events found that inexpensive apartments see hikes of 5% on average after a flood. These hikes hit low-income households hardest, forcing them to relocate or cut down on other expenses.

This same dynamic was on display in Los Angeles earlier this year following the Palisades and Eaton fires. One of the people who tested this market was Blanca, a woman who lived in an apartment building in Altadena, and who declined to give her last name because of her immigration status. The Eaton Fire destroyed her business and caused significant damage to the apartment complex where she and her husband lived. Even though their unit was intact, the building lacked water, gas, and electricity.

An aerial view of burned properties in Altadena, taken in July. Many of the homes destroyed in the January fires have not been rebuilt.

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Allen J. Schaben

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images via Grist

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Blanca and her husband looked for other apartments, but all the available units they found were far too expensive, some thousands of dollars above what they had paid in Altadena for the same amount of space. They couldn’t afford anything like what landlords were asking, so after a few weeks, they moved back to their unit in the damaged complex and lived there paying rent in unsafe conditions for months.

“The place has not even been inspected, and many people have returned since February,” said Blanca in Spanish. “But there was nowhere else to go.”

In the first days after the fire, California attorney general Bonta trumpeted the state’s price-gouging ban several times — not only could landlords not raise prices by more than 10%, they also couldn’t list new units for more than 160% of typical market value. But property owners seemed either not to know about the law, or not to care.

Bonta, the attorney general, has sent more than 750 warning letters since the fire to property owners who may have price gouged, but has initiated only four lawsuits, and so far not obtained a conviction. The city attorney of Los Angeles has filed a few of its own lawsuits, including against Airbnb, but the district attorney for much larger Los Angeles County has not filed a single price-gouging case. Legal nonprofits say they can’t pick up the slack because they need a named victim in order to sue a landlord, and most disaster victims don’t have the knowledge or resources to pursue litigation.

“We have been a little bit disappointed, I will say,” said Rodney Leggett, the director of litigation at the Housing Rights Center in Los Angeles, which has sued a few property owners over the post-fire price gouging, including the company that owns the historic Villa Carlotta apartments in Hollywood. “We have gotten complaints of people seeing price gouging, [but] we have gotten relatively few … people saying, ‘I am actively being price gouged.’ I think a big part of that is it's really hard for people to track, and to know, the sort of price changes that have occurred.”

But the epidemic of price-gouging in L.A. after the fires has also triggered new progress on the difficult issue of enforcement. As Zillow flooded with overpriced homes, a group of tenant advocates began an unprecedented crowdsourcing campaign to track and shame price-gougers. Kirk, a policy advocate at the progressive nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, was seeing numerous instances of price hikes, but she knew that Bonta’s office and local prosecutors lacked the capacity to track and sue every landlord who was posting high-priced units.

Kirk partnered with Lauren Harper, a data analyst and fellow tenant advocate, and together they took enforcement into their own hands. Forming a new organization called The Rent Brigade, they created a spreadsheet that scraped Zillow for apartment listings that violated the price-gouging laws, and also encouraged fire victims and volunteers to submit proof of gouging. In the first few weeks after the fire, volunteers submitted more than 1,500 examples.

Mike Nemeth, the head of communications for the California Apartment Association, the state’s biggest landlord lobby, told Grist that most landlords tried their best to comply with the law.

“The California Apartment Association takes seriously the legal and ethical obligations of rental housing providers during declared emergencies,” he said. “Most housing providers want to do the right thing, and our role is to help them navigate complex rules when it matters most.”

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Zoe Myers

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Thanks in part to the Rent Brigade’s pressure, local officials in Los Angeles are now trying to step up enforcement. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted in July to create a new system for penalizing price spike activity. Instead of waiting for a prosecutor or a legal nonprofit to file a court complaint against a landlord, the local government could slap the landlord with an administrative fine, the same way it would punish a restaurant with cockroaches in its kitchen or a driver who parked near a fire hydrant. The fines could reach up to $1000 per violation per day, with an additional $500 per day for failing to cooperate with county investigations.

Jamie Court, president of the advocacy firm Consumer Watchdog, says this kind of ordinance could be a model for how to enforce price-gouging laws.

“This is desperately needed as a deterrent and to let people know that price gouging is not up to prosecutorial discretion,” he told Grist. “People need to know every violation could result in a fine, not just the few prosecutors choose to prosecute.”

Los Angeles County’s price-gouging will lapse at the end of August when the fire emergency ended, so the new rules will only apply the next time California declares an emergency for a fire, flood, or other calamity. But during the last months of the ban, Kirk and other advocates noticed something unexpected — and concerning. The rush of new housing demand from the fire had ended, but many landlords were still listing new units well above fair market rate.

The L.A. housing supply, Kirk and Harper concluded, was so limited that price gouging had become a normal part of the market. Even in the absence of a major shock like the fire, landlords were still asking for exorbitant rents, and tenants were still paying them. The emergency declaration was only going to last for an arbitrary period of a few months, but the overall housing picture was as bad as ever.

“When the fire started, we were seeing a lot of these units coming online for absurd prices from people who don't usually rent, maybe knowing that people coming from the Palisades would be able to afford those kinds of things,” said Harper. “But the further that we get from the fires…I think it's reflective of just high rents.”

Starting this fall, 56 students from East Los Angeles College will use surplus apartment-style housing at Cal State L.A. in a first-ever partnership to address housing insecurity.

“ It's a natural marriage, a partnership, because many of our students from East Los Angeles College tend to attend Cal State L.A., and the neat part about this is that not only are they going to be housed at Cal State L.A., they will be provided with the resources typically given to Cal State students,” said Alberto Román, chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District.  “But more importantly, they're on campus and they can begin to see themselves as potential Cal State students.”

More than 50% of Los Angeles area community college students have declared they’re housing insecure, prompting a three-pronged approach by the Los Angeles Community College District to lease the excess rooms from Cal State L.A.

The partnership is for five years. By the third year, Román said the plan is to have 120 community college students housed at Cal State L.A. The partnership, as well as LACCD’s new plans to build and buy housing units close to community college campuses, is being funded by Measure LA.

“We at LACCD, which is the largest community college system in the country, have been grappling with this for a long time as we've seen L.A. deal with a housing crisis, with a housing affordability crisis, and we've seen so many of our students be affected by housing insecurity or the lack of housing,” said Sara Hernandez, board president of the Los Angeles Community College District.

It’s a moral issue for the district to ensure students have housing, she added, but also “an issue of enrollment.”

“ If people can't afford to live in Los Angeles, especially young people, then they are not going to be able to utilize the community college system, meaning our enrollment goes down,” Hernandez said.  

Other ways LACCD is addressing housing

Román said the LACCD is also exploring a housing partnership with California State University, Dominguez Hills to house community college students on their campus.

And through funding received from Measure LA, the LACCD is also embarking on a project to build housing on land they own at Pierce College and City College.

“ We will also look at procuring properties close to our colleges that could serve as dorms and are within walking distance of the college,” Román said. “ We have also put out a bid for property acquisition, meaning that we invite folks who may have properties available for housing to bid on that and to make them available to us.”

In 2022, voters approved Measure LA, which allowed the LACCD to issue a $5.3 billion bond, financed by a new property tax, to improve infrastructure and job training facilities across its nine colleges. Around $500 million was earmarked for housing.

The district’s goal,  Román said, was to fully pay for and provide housing for 1,500 to 2,000 students.

The Boyle Heights warehouse fire — and the stench of millions of pounds of rotting food that followed — spoiled summer break for neighborhood kids.

“ Summer's been like a worst nightmare because we couldn't be going outside,” said Noah, a 9-year-old student at Eastman Elementary. It’s one of eight schools serving thousands of students within a mile of the cold storage warehouse that burned in June.

The ongoing clean-up has also added a layer of anxiety and complication for parents at the start of the new school year.

Los Angeles Unified said in a statement Friday that the current plan is for students to return to their home campuses on Aug. 12, the first day of school. The district said staff conducted a “deep, thorough cleaning,” installed new air conditioning filters and air purifiers at affected campuses and that environmental testing is ongoing.

LAUSD superintendent Andrés Chait said in July that Boyle Heights summer school participation dropped after the relocation of four programs in response to the fire. The district declined to provide enrollment and attendance figures for the programs and instead instructed LAist to file a public records request for the information.

Marcela Chagoya is a special education history teacher at  Stevenson College and Career Prep, a middle school within a mile of the fire. She said some of her students relocated to temporary housing or moved in with extended family to escape the stench.

“ I always get excited every single year to see how much [students] grew over the summer,” Chagoya said. “But my concern really this time around is, are all my kiddos gonna come back?”

Some families LAist spoke with said they are ready to send their children back to school.

Ivett Dominguez’s son Diego will start second grade at Eastman next week after a summer spent inside watching TV and playing video games instead of going to baseball practice, swimming and playing at the park.

“I’m confident that it’ll be a good year for them, even if they’re not outside on the playground,” Dominguez said in Spanish.

[“ Confío que a lo mejor va a ser un buen año para ellos aunque no estén afuera del patio.”]

She said she feels like the school is safe, in part because of the new air purifiers.

But others, including Noah’s grandmother Brenda Wenger, said they haven’t decided whether to send children to class on the first day. Wenger said she attended one of the district’s recent webinars about the clean-up, but wants to see the campus for herself.

“ I'm gonna take my Clorox wipeys and I'm gonna look and see if it's been cleaned up or not,” Wenger said.

‘Mom, we’re going to die’

The fire began on June 17.

Dominguez, who lives about five blocks away, said when the air was thick with smoke her son Diego told her, “Ma, we’re going to burn. Ma, we’re going to die. We have to leave.”

[“ Ma, nos vamos a quemar. Ma, nos vamos a morir. Tenemos que irnos.”]

Dominguez said she reassured him that the firefighters would get the blaze under control. The L.A. Fire Department declared the fire "knocked down" a week later on June 24.

Ivette Dominguez and her son Diego live about five blocks from the Lineage warehouse. Dominguez said constantly running an air purifier has contributed to an electric bill that's more than tripled to about $170 per month.

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The warehouse stored approximately 88 million pounds of food. What didn’t burn decayed in the summer heat and attracted hordes of flies and rodents to the area. Lineage, the company that owns the warehouse, said it has removed about 63% of the food waste as of Aug. 3.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) has received more than 3,900 complaints about rotting meat and other food odors associated with the clean-up since July 12 and has cited the company 22 times for violating public nuisance rules.

Myrna Silva and her two children live one block from the warehouse. She said her daughter, who will soon start middle school, didn’t attend summer school or play in the park after the fire. Even walking their dog, nicknamed Don Goyo, has become challenging.

“As soon as they go out … they come running back in, because of the smell, because of the mosquitoes, because of the flies,” Silva said.

[“ Apenas salen … entran corriendo, porque el aroma, porque los zancudos, porque las moscas.”]

In recent days, the family has experienced stomach pains and diarrhea. Silva said she’s also concerned about how staying inside all summer has impacted her children’s mental health.

“Our kids will go to school frustrated,” Silva said. “They’re going to go into school stressed out. And what worries me is the reaction that all the children are going to have together. Some will adapt. Others won’t.”

[“ Nuestros hijos van frustrados a la escuela. Aan a entrar estresados a la escuela. Y lo preocupante es la reacción que van a tener todos los niños en conjunto. Algunos se van a acoplar. Otros no.”]

Silva said she’s more confident sending her son to Garfield High School because it’s farther from the site of the fire. But she worried about sending her daughter to Stevenson, which is within the 1-mile radius.

“I hope the district makes the best decisions so the kids are OK,” Silva said. “But I’m very worried about how a lot of children are going to react, because they’re under so much stress right now.”

[“Ojalá el distrito tome las mejores decisiones para que los niños estén bien. Pero me preocupa bastante el cómo van a reaccionar muchos niños, porque traen mucho estrés ahorita.”]

How is LAUSD cleaning and testing Boyle Heights schools? 

LAUSD classes start two days before L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’s deadline for Lineage to clean up the remaining food waste.

District leaders said in a July 29 webinar that their goal is for students to return to a school day that is “as normal as possible.” There will be at least two more webinars with information about schools near the warehouse before the first day of classes.

The district also has a family hotline at 213-443-1300.

“To date, no local, state, or federal agencies have issued specific guidelines or mandates directing the District's response to the Lineage fire,” a district spokesperson wrote in a statement to LAist in response to questions about campus cleaning and testing.

Instead, the district reviewed environmental monitoring data, consulted with UCLA and USC environmental health researchers and reflected on past post-fire practices.

The district’s response to the Lineage fire has included:

• Inspecting and replacing air-conditioning filters with those rated MERV-13, an indicator of the filter’s ability to trap small particles
• Deep cleaning, including by washing walls and furniture, waxing floors and pressure-washing outdoor areas and playground equipment
• Placing air purifiers with carbon charcoal filters in all classrooms

Carlos Torres, who leads the district’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety, said the district monitored air quality during and after the fire and facilitated the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s installation of additional air-monitoring equipment at Eastman Elementary and Stevenson Middle Schools.

“We have enough information to show that our schools are safe,” Torres said. Additional testing is ongoing and results will be posted on the district’s website before school starts, Torres said. The district has said laboratory results from air and surface samples will be published online in early August. Those results had not been posted as of Monday afternoon.

Several people, including members of the teacher’s union and area Board Member Rocío Rivas, have called on the district to also conduct soil testing.

Boyle Heights is one of several East and Southeast L.A. communities with persistently high levels of lead linked to the former Exide battery recycling facility.

A district spokesperson wrote in a statement to LAist that the district has conducted “extensive dust wipe samples.”

“Soil sampling is a more general type of sampling, whereas dust wipe sampling enables us to detect the presence of toxins that may be present following an industrial fire,” the statement read.

It’s unclear whether the dust wipe results are available for public review.

Gilberto Martinez, executive director of region operations, said principals will have the discretion to bring students inside during recess and mealtimes if foul odors arise.

“ I'm feeling kind of scared and nervous because... what if we're not going to be able to play outside,” said Aiden, Noah’s brother and fellow student at Eastman Elementary. “We’re just going to be trapped inside just learning?”

Myrna Silva and her daughter Getzetmany stand in front of InnerCity Struggle, a local nonprofit that's provided resources, including air purifiers, to residents living nearby the warehouse fire site.

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Jill Johnston, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at UC Irvine, said while unfortunate for students like Aiden, limiting outdoor activity when strong odors are present is the right call.

“There are bad smells, which are a nuisance. But there are also toxic chemicals that are in the air,” said Johnston, who has been working with Boyle Heights community groups to understand the effects of the fire. “Many of these are linked to nausea, to headaches, to adverse respiratory outcomes.”

Johnston said she was pleased to see that nearby schools are equipped with air purifiers that have carbon-based filters, which can remove odor-causing compounds from the air. Johnston said schools need to minimize how much outdoor air is getting inside for the filters to work well.

“The big test is: can kids go into the school and it be a refuge from all the odors that are outside?” Johnston said. “If so, then that's pretty effective.”

Two years out from the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Los Angeles officials say security requirements could displace hundreds of unhoused people living around competition venues during the summer of 2028. But there's no plan for how those people will be relocated, where they'll go, or who will pay for it.

Los Angeles has one of the largest unsheltered populations in the nation, which as of the latest count rose to 49,002 unsheltered people countywide. That includes people living near prominent Olympics locations like the Venice Beach Boardwalk, Sepulveda Basin and Exposition Park.

The Metro L.A. area, which includes venues Crypto Arena, Peacock Theater and the Convention Center, saw its unsheltered population increase by about 20% this year.

Security requirements could kick people out

Exactly how many people might be forced out around venues is not yet clear. The plans will come down to security perimeters — zones around event sites established by the U.S. Secret Service.

Brandon Dean, the chief of special operations for the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, told LAist security perimeters will be divided into "red" zones directly around venues where people and vehicles will be screened before entering, and "yellow" zones marking a larger outer perimeter. Dean said he expected that unhoused people would be able to remain in yellow areas, but not red zones.

A spokesperson for the Secret Service told LAist that the agency hasn’t yet determined the exact areas that will need heightened security. But early conversations indicate they could be expansive. Carter Hewgley, chief strategy officer for L.A. County’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing, said his office had been told to plan for perimeters as wide as a mile.

" By our current needs assessment, there's about 1,600 unsheltered people that are in the areas around the projected venues that could be impacted," Hewgley said.

Hewgley said plans are likely to change as the Olympics get closer. Still, the number lays out the scope of the challenge for Los Angeles, where homelessness is an endemic crisis despite billions of dollars spent combatting the problem. Since 2016, one year before L.A. secured the bid to host the 2028 Olympics, homelessness in the city is up 59%.

No single authority for addressing homelessness

To address homelessness around Olympic venues on a tight timeline, officials at the cash-strapped city and county say they need money and a road map. Both don't yet exist. The Secret Service is in charge of security, but there is no single authority coordinating or responsible for addressing homelessness during the Olympics.

Gita O’Neill, interim CEO of the embattled Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, told the city council ad-hoc committee on the Olympics recently that organizers should establish an interagency task force to manage how homelessness would be handled ahead of and during the Games.

City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson has also introduced a motion at city council requesting a report on how L.A. plans to clear encampments around Olympic locations. That motion also asks for details on locating housing for people and how the city can recover costs.

"If we've got a place where we know there's an encampment and we know there's going to be an activity there, how do we do encampment resolution? How do we make sure it's done in a humane way? And how do we make sure it's paid for?" Harris-Dawson told LAist.

Meanwhile, critics say emerging plans for unhoused people during the Olympics are short-sighted, when Los Angeles needs to prioritize permanent rather than temporary housing.

 "We always see with big events this kind of enhanced enforcement," said John Raphling, an organizer with the Los Angeles Community Action Network, a group that advocates for people experiencing homelessness. "And it's never made up for with an enhanced effort to actually solve the problem… through keeping people in their permanent homes and developing more affordable housing and preserving the existing affordable housing."

Funding is unclear

In 1984, the last time L.A. hosted the Olympics, police officers on horseback scattered people living on the streets of Skid Row ahead of the Games. One police captain told the L.A. Times it was an effort to "sanitize" the city.

L.A. officials this time around say they're committed to clearing encampments and people only if they can offer them at least temporary housing. But as of this month, there is no additional funding for such a project.

That means local officials are seeking funds for the Olympics specifically.

Carter Hewgley, with L.A. County, said officials have applied for nearly $93 million in state funding for "encampment resolution" around Olympic venues. He said that some of that money would follow the county's Pathway Home model, which clears encampments and brings individuals into interim housing. Hewgley said funds would also go towards direct financial assistance to help move people out of interim housing to create more space for an influx of new people that may be coming from around sports venues.

" We are signaling to the state that this is a large event with large impacts and consequences and will require a large amount of resources," Hewgley said.

City officials are also asking private Olympics organizing committee LA28 to help pick up the tab. According to an agreement with the city, Olympics organizers are expected to pay for Games-related city services that go beyond what's "normal and customary."

But a recent human rights report produced by LA28 deferred to city officials on homelessness. That strategy document, submitted to the City Council, said that LA28 would coordinate with local officials and providers who will be supporting unhoused people impacted by the Olympics. It also pledged to notify authorities as early as possible if an unhoused person needs to be relocated due to the Games.

City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, who chairs the budget and finance committee, questioned LA28's senior human rights advisor Julieta Valls Noyes about those plans at a recent council committee meeting.

 "Will LA28 ensure that the city or homelessness outreach organizations have the resources to engage unhoused residents who may be living inside a venue area or security perimeter?" Yaroslavsky asked. "Because, you know, we're not going to be able to do this on top of what we're already doing without help."

Noyes responded saying that she believed the mass displacement of unhoused people that has occurred at past Olympics would not be as much of an issue for Los Angeles because organizers are relying on existing facilities rather than building new ones.

Others aren't so sure. Randall Kuhn, a UCLA professor who runs a monthly survey of Los Angeles County's unhoused population, said he's worried about parts of downtown that are dense with tents and people being caught up in Olympics security plans.

"What do they intend to do? What is the plan?" Kuhn said. "Is there an intention to provide any kind of genuine pipeline of care, a genuine pipeline to permanent housing? Or is this just gonna be sweeps that just push people just outside the perimeter?"

Kuhn's working on including questions about how people are feeling about the Olympics in his monthly survey. But two years out, he says many people living on the streets in L.A. are just focused on survival.

In October 2023, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appointed herself to the board of the regional Homeless Services Authority, also known as LAHSA.

No other mayor had done that. It was a bold move designed to signal she wasn’t going to stand by and allow others to make important decisions on the homelessness crisis without her.

Two years later, Bass touted a 17.5% drop in the number of people living on the streets in the city.

But that downward trend did not continue. The latest LAHSA homeless count numbers showed overall homelessness — referring to people without a fixed nighttime residence — crept back up 3.4% last year. Street homelessness — referring to people living in tents, cars and outdoors — jumped 7.9%.

More than 45,000 unhoused people live in the city of L.A., about 36% of whom live in shelters, according to LAHSA.

Homelessness remains a key issue for L.A. voters, and the latest homeless count numbers were a blow to the incumbent mayor who put homelessness at the top of her agenda.

They could threaten her reelection bid in November.

“It really undercuts her core reelection pitch,” said Sara Sadhwani, associate professor of politics at Pomona College. “This increase is a major step back for Bass.”

The mayor blamed cuts in funding for the increase.

Mayor Karen Bass at a LAHSA meeting on Feb. 28, 2025.

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“Last year our efforts ultimately couldn’t keep up with policies and funding cuts at the federal and state levels that pushed more people onto the streets,” Bass said in a statement last month following the release of the count results.

Bass’ challenger in the mayoral election, L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, has pointed out that the funding cuts occurred after the homeless count, which took place in January.

The numbers from the count looked good for Raman, whose council district saw a drop in street homelessness.

But Bass has said that decrease is due, at least in part, to her signature Inside Safe program, which targets encampments for removal while offering people living there temporary shelter and services.

Effects of Inside Safe

Raman, who was elected to the council in 2020, said there’s been a lack of oversight of Inside Safe. She said people brought in off city streets have lingered too long in temporary shelters, like motels, without moving on to permanent housing and haven’t been given the social services they needed to get back on their feet.

“The city has spent millions of dollars moving encampments from one block to the next without actually bringing people indoors, and a LAHSA analysis found that 81% of those sites were repopulated,” Raman said at a news conference last month.

Nithya Raman, an L.A. City Councilmember at a mayoral campaign event in May 2026.

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Raman, who chairs the City Council’s housing and homelessness committee, hyped a 49% drop in unsheltered homelessness in her council district during the homeless count period from January 2025 to January 2026. Her district stretches from Silver Lake over the Hollywood Hills to Sherman Oaks.

However, hers had a smaller number of unhoused people to begin with compared with other districts.

“We have one of the most aggressive interventionist approaches across the entire city,” she said. “My office pioneered having a homelessness team embedded in the council office when I first started.”

She said her staff knows many of the people experiencing homelessness in the district by name. And she said staffers are tracking homeless encampments on maps.

Raman contends the mayor’s Inside Safe program has fallen short. But Bass stresses that Raman’s district has benefitted from the program.

“It is hard to believe both statements could be true,” said Bass campaign strategist Julie Chavez Rodriguez. “Inside Safe is ineffective and yet it drove down homelessness in council district four — Councilwoman Raman’s district.”

Credit vs. criticism on homelessness

A UC Berkeley/L.A. Times poll found 66% of voters see moving homeless residents indoors as “very important.”

“It's one of the big issues, if not the top issue,” Grose said. “I think it's part of a broader quality-of-life discussion.”

Zev Yaroslavsky, who directs the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said Bass should get credit for taking on the issue.

“She is the first mayor in my lifetime who actually said from day one that this is an issue she’s going to take on. She put it on her shoulders,” said Yaroslavsky, a former county supervisor and City Council member for four decades.

But Yaroslavsky said Bass overpromised on the number of people who could get housed. During her 2022 campaign for mayor, Bass said she would move 17,000 people into shelters during her first year in office.

According to the Mayor’s Office, Inside Safe has moved more than 6,000 people into motels and other types of interim housing so far.

That’s progress Bass probably isn't getting credit for, said Yaroslavsky.

“When you’re not popular, you have a harder time getting people to believe that you’re making progress,” he said.

In June, the federal government suspended LAHSA from future federal funding opportunities, threatening more than $240 million in annual grants. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development cited a pattern of financial mismanagement, unverified housing sites and conflict-of-interest violations at LAHSA as reasons for the suspension.

Los Angeles County in February slashed nearly $200 million from homelessness programs, driven by lower-than-expected sales tax revenues and expiring pandemic-era relief funds.

USC political science Professor Christian Grose said it's not surprising that the mayor pointed to those federal and state funding cuts for the overall increase in homelessness.

“It's normal for a mayor who is facing a tough reelection fight to blame other levels of government,” he said. “It's also a smart political move to blame the Trump administration for a reduction in funding.”

Raman said the mayor should take more responsibility.

“The mayor’s job is not to explain why someone else is responsible," she said. "The mayor’s job is to take charge of the system and deliver results.”

Raman said, if elected, she would reduce street homelessness by 50% before the 2028 Olympics and eliminate it entirely by the end of her first four years in office.

Yaroslavsky said that’s unrealistic, given the enormity and complexity of the challenge.

Rodriguez told LAist the mayor remains committed to reducing homelessness.

“She remains focused on addressing this critical issue,” Rodriguez said. “Before she came into office, homelessness was on the rise and she’s going to continue to focus on bringing it down.”