Topline:
Los Angeles has started clearing brush from the Sepulveda Basin and will soon tear down homeless encampments.
A complex issue: Concerns about encampments, fires and a lack of services provided to unhoused people in the area have persisted for years, but some worry people will be displaced without the long-term support they need ahead of the 2028 Olympics.
Echoes from July: Another encampment near the Sepulveda Basin was cleared in July, leading to a clash between police and protesters who said the city was not doing enough to support those who were being forced out.
Read on… for more about the proposed clearing and efforts to increase support to unhoused people in the area.
Los Angeles has started clearing brush from the Sepulveda Basin and will soon tear down homeless encampments.
Mayor Karen Bass spoke at an event hosted by the Salvation Army on Sep. 9, saying she sees fire risks in the area as an emergency.
“We are going to clear out the brush and we are going to have the people move. They absolutely have to move,” Bass said. “The problem in the Sepulveda Basin is a danger to everybody that is unhoused and everybody that is housed, because the number of fires that happen there almost on a daily basis.”
Some residents near the Sepulveda Basin have raised concerns about encampments, fires and a lack of services provided to unhoused people in the area for years. With increased attention ahead of the 2028 Olympics, some are also worried that people will be displaced without the long-term support they need.
Bass said she is “extremely aware” that the area is a venue for the Olympics and noted that the city offers everyone in cleared encampments housing through the Inside Safe program.
“One of the things that we've done is that when we try to clear an encampment and house the people, we take everybody and put them in a motel because we know that encampments are communities,” Bass said at the Sep. 9 event.
Understanding the issue
Documenting how many people live unhoused in the Sepulveda Basin has been a persistent challenge.
Jodie Francisco helped to lead LAHSA’s 2025 homeless count in the basin as a site coordinator after organizing an independent annual count of the area since 2019.
As co-chair of the Encino Neighborhood Council’s homelessness committee, Francisco said she was skeptical when LAHSA’s official 2018 count found only 32 people were living in the basin.
She teamed up with other neighborhood council members, park rangers, outreach workers and an LAPD senior lead officer to do their own count a few months later. They found closer to 500 people and temporary shelters.
Francisco told LAist that LAHSA’s count continued to be lower than the one she helped organize year after year, though the difference was less stark. In 2024, LAHSA counted 30 people and Francisco’s team counted 154.
Then Francisco was taken on as a site coordinator for LAHSA’s 2025 count and the number of people counted by the agency shot up to an estimate of about 350, according to an LAist analysis of LAHSA count data.
Francisco said more services have been provided to unhoused people living in the Sepulveda Basin since the 2025 count, but that the city needs a comprehensive plan in place to support the people living there when they leave.
“It's not as if you can go in there one time and say, 'Hey, here's a motel room,'" she told LAist. “It takes building trust and getting to know the person and finding out what their needs are. Because not everybody that experiences homelessness has the same needs.”
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Others have voiced their own concerns in recent months about the lack of long-term support provided to people living in encampments, including protesters who clashed with police while city crews cleared a nearby encampment in July.
Bass said the encampment was dangerous and chided the protesters.
“How dare they sleep in a comfortable bed at night and then come here and advocate for people to stay in these kinds of conditions," she said of the protesters when answering questions from reporters at the scene.
