The Brief

If you’re trying to address homelessness in L.A., there is some foundational information you need in order to evaluate what’s working and what’s not, such as:

• How many unhoused people is the city moving into housing? 
• How many of those people are staying housed?
• How has this changed from the number of people housed last year?

For almost a year, we’ve been hunting down answers to these seemingly simple questions for the Promise Tracker, a project to hold L.A. Mayor Karen Bass accountable to her campaign pledge to house 17,000 unhoused Angelenos by the end of her first year in office.

For most of the year, we couldn’t get accurate answers. In fact, no one has been able to give clear answers to these questions for years, so this was a problem long before the current administration. But the Bass administration set their goal of housing 17,000 Angelenos without a thorough understanding of how such data is tracked and logged, meaning that for much of her first year in office, they — and therefore us at LAist — were operating without a clear picture of how much their interventions were working.

We revealed in late April that council members were not receiving the data reports they had ordered months earlier about the mayor’s signature homeless housing program Inside Safe, which would show exactly where the money is going and how many people have been sheltered. Council members then pressed the mayor’s office for the data, and numbers eventually started being provided to the council about two months later.

Until November, the overall housing numbers reported out by the city were rife with duplicates and other issues. As we investigated each of these issues, we learned that there were two key reasons why:

• The data collection process for some housing programs left room for many errors and missing information, and there wasn’t a system in place to ensure accuracy.
• Data on people entering housing was collected separately by program, so it wasn’t clear how much overlap there was among people moving between programs or cycling in and out.  

Although government officials say they have been working to address both issues, this was the obstacle in front of us all year: Even though we received updates on how many times people were housed, the numbers were likely inflated, and we had no idea by how much.

We also didn’t know how many of those people were still housed, or how many returned to the streets. Nor how this year’s numbers compare to previous years. All this made it impossible to have a clear picture of how progress was or wasn’t being made.

The city has allocated $1.3 billion for this year alone to invest in solutions for the homelessness crisis — a budget Bass called “unprecedented.” The state of emergency she declared as one of her first acts as mayor increased her powers to tackle the crisis.

Getting clear and accurate answers on how many people are being housed is essential to holding the Bass administration accountable on this problem. Government entities are calling out data issues as well. Just last week, the city controller’s office released an audit report showing that the lack of accurate data has prevented people who are unhoused from accessing available shelter and temporary housing.

L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez also referenced this problem during an August city council meeting about Bass’ signature temporary housing program: “There's a fundamental problem with getting some very basic information here, and it's costing taxpayers millions of dollars.”

Tracking programs, not people's overall path

There actually is a lot of data about how many people are being housed, but it’s tracked by program, making an overall picture of progress challenging to get.

The government funds several programs to place people into temporary and permanent housing: Bass’ Inside Safe program, tiny home villages, family shelters, permanent housing vouchers issued by the federal government, vouchers for veterans, and more. Different agencies track data for certain types of programs — the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) manages data for temporary housing, the Housing Authority of the City of L.A. (HACLA) oversees vouchers, and the city’s Housing Department tracks how many people live in new permanent housing units funded by the city’s Proposition HHH.

Because a person might be a part of more than one homelessness program over time, they might be recorded more than once. And because these agencies don’t have direct access to each other’s data, this leads to duplicates, which can lead to inflated numbers.

At a Dec. 6 press roundtable showing homelessness progress numbers for Bass’ first year, city officials urged reporters not to add up the number of people housed in each program to get a total number of people housed because they had not removed any duplicate records.

The data is set up this way because individual programs are tracked separately.

Tracking the outcomes of programs makes sense — there are a lot of taxpayer funds on the line. Inside Safe alone has a budget of $250 million for just this fiscal year. And the city’s HHH housing program is authorized to borrow up to $1.2 billion, with additional funds for this housing coming from other levels of government. So it’s important to make sure that money is being spent effectively.

Program-oriented data answers questions like:

• How many times did people enter a particular housing program?
• How many times did people leave?
• What do numbers look like at specific shelters?

This can tell you whether services are being utilized and how much it costs, on average, to provide a service, like housing one person in one Inside Safe motel room.

But when the numbers only tell a story about programs and not people, it’s hard to get a sense of what’s happening overall. It prevents government leaders — and the public — from getting answers that measure overall progress, such as:

• How many people moved into housing across all programs this year?
• How many moved from one program to another? 
• How many returned to encampments? 
• How many left for other housing alternatives not provided by the government? 

Bass summed up the problem when she spoke with our radio program AirTalk in November.

“The data is process-oriented — how many people came into housing,” she said. “It’s not outcome oriented, meaning: How many people stayed in housing and what happened to them four to five months down the line? That data is not available.”

The numbers themselves were often inaccurate

In fact, there were many data points we couldn’t get at all — and neither could the City Council for nearly the first half of the year. As we reported in April, the Bass administration said the numbers couldn’t be trusted.

For example, in a July report the Bass administration said that when it looked at the March 2023 numbers for Inside Safe collected by LAHSA and compared it to reports from people running various shelters, they found that only 59% of Inside Safe’s data on people entering the program matched what was in LAHSA’s system.

The accuracy rates were far worse for permanent housing data and program exit data: 4% and 0%, respectively, according to the report.

Although LAHSA collects and maintains data across all the temporary housing programs in L.A., LAHSA officials usually aren’t the people handling the data entry of when someone enters or leaves a shelter or housing program. That responsibility falls to the service providers, usually nonprofits paid by LAHSA to run the shelter or housing under a contract.

According to LAHSA officials, there are about 6,000 people across different service providers who enter data into this system, making it challenging to ensure consistency and accuracy across the board.

When service providers record a new intake — that is, someone entering one of the government housing programs — sometimes the information they have is pretty limited, perhaps just a first name or a physical description, according to Bevin Kuhn, LAHSA’s senior advisor for IT and data management. These incomplete records of individuals are another challenge that leads to duplicates, Kuhn says. LAHSA officials say they constantly work to de-duplicate by merging profiles that have similar information.

Since we launched the Promise Tracker in May, we had been warned there were duplicates, and we flagged this in our earliest updates. It wasn’t until November, six months later, that the Bass administration shared numbers that it said were de-duplicated for temporary housing.

Providing detailed data entry while trying to move people out of encampments and into housing is “a lot for on-the-ground workers, especially if I’m a caseworker and I’m not data savvy,” said Kuhn. “It’s really hard to capture all those data elements perfectly.”

Most shelters don’t have much day-to-day turnover, Kuhn said. But one Inside Safe operation — in which an encampment is cleared and people living there are offered temporary housing — can lead to dozens of new housing placements in one day, making it a lot more challenging to enter data efficiently.

The L.A. Grand Hotel in downtown, one of the sites used as temporary housing for Inside Safe.

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LAHSA requires service providers to enter data on people entering and exiting shelters within 24 hours, according to the recent city controller audit. But the audit found that “LAHSA does not monitor or enforce their data entry requirements” to make its bed reservation system function properly.

For the Inside Safe motel program, providers also are required to log when unhoused people exit the motel room program, but LAHSA doesn’t enforce this requirement, a LAHSA executive told city council members in August. This means that a lot of service providers skip this step, she said at the time.

That meant the city might have been unknowingly paying for empty motel rooms, nearly eight months after the program had launched, council members were told by the mayor’s staff.

The mayor’s staff say they worked closely with LAHSA to deploy a system to resolve the discrepancies, and that LAHSA started using a revamped tracking methodology in June that improved the accuracy rates. And Kuhn said the agency beefed up their teams on the ground to work alongside providers to verify the accuracy of data.

It took most of this year to put the necessary changes in place and for the data to reach what the Bass administration considered an acceptable rate of accuracy for sharing with the public.

We're finally getting some clarity

Many of the data problems we encountered appear to be longstanding issues that Mayor Bass inherited when she came into office. She’s expressed frustration multiple times over these systems and the quality of the numbers. And she’s said her administration is working to establish new and better data systems, with the help of a new LAHSA CEO, Va Lecia Adams Kellum.

Bass is also taking on more of a direct oversight role at LAHSA — in a way that prior mayors have not — by putting herself on its governing commission. County supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Kathryn Barger have done the same, with Horvath now serving as the commission’s chair.

They’ve already made some changes to address some of these issues. LAHSA and the mayor’s office confirmed that they removed duplicates from their temporary housing numbers. We now know how many individual people moved into temporary housing.

As of Dec. 1, they reported that 21,694 people had moved into temporary housing in the year since Bass came into office in December 2022.

They also reported a 65% retention rate across all temporary housing programs — that is, 65% of the people who entered temporary housing are still housed as of today in either temporary or permanent housing.

But when it comes to the overall picture, we still don’t have reliable numbers.

There could still be double-counting of people who went from temporary housing into a permanent housing program. We don’t know how many people have left permanent housing and fallen back into homelessness. And we don’t know if that 65% retention rate is an improvement over prior years, because we don’t have a retention rate for 2022.

However, officials say more clarity is on the horizon. According to the mayor’s office, LAHSA and the city Housing Authority (which keeps data on permanent housing) have agreed to share more of their data going forward, so that everyone can better understand how many individuals are being housed across all types of housing, not just temporary housing.

What we know today

Here are the current, best-available answers to those simple, foundational questions that we’ve spent all year trying to figure out:

How many unhoused people has the city moved into housing?

At least 21,694 people as of Dec. 1, according to temporary housing numbers from LAHSA and the mayor’s office. Adding people who’ve used vouchers or moved into new permanent housing units, that number could be as much as 11,000 higher — but because there’s likely some overlap with those in temporary housing, we don’t know how much higher it actually is.

How many of those people are staying housed?

A 65% retention rate for 21,694 people suggests that around 14,000 people who moved into temporary housing this year would still be housed. We don’t know what the retention is for people who have moved into permanent housing.

How has this changed from 2022?

The mayor’s office provided these numbers on Dec. 6:

• 21,694 people moved into temporary housing in 2023, up from 16,931 the year before
• 7,717 people moved into housing using vouchers in 2023, up from 5,223 the year before
• 3,551 people moved into new permanent housing units in 2023, up from approximately 1,361 the year before

This suggests increases all around, but because there are still potential duplicates between different types of housing across both years, we still don’t know what the actual change is in the overall number of people housed.

Heading into Year 2 of Bass’s term, here are the questions we’ll be asking:

• How many people are being moved from temporary housing into permanent housing, especially in Inside Safe?
• What is the retention rate and how does it compare to retention for 2023?

Are there other questions we should be asking? Let us know by submitting your question below.

Midterms coverage: Live results | What to know | Stories around the country
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Democrats appear poised to retake control of the House on Tuesday. If they do, will their majority be built upon a blue wave or a tiny trickle? A previous NPR analysis found both parties spending deep and wide in a competitive landscape that spans 70 districts, ranging from longtime tossups to newly-competitive seats in deeply conservative areas.

Republicans came into Election Day with a narrow 218-214 seat advantage in the House and facing severe headwinds as the party in power. This midterm cycle has also seen a record number of departures from Congress, and polls show voters aren't happy about things like the economy and the ongoing war in Iran.

So what separates a good night for Democrats from a blue wave that sees dozens of House seats change hands? Here's NPR's cheat sheet to four types of House races to watch as results come in:

Early polls closing

The first results of the night with national implications will likely be from Kentucky's 6th Congressional District (KY-06) and Indiana's 5th (IN-05), two districts where polls close first (in the 6 p.m. ET hour) and whose 2024 margins for President Trump (15 and 17 points, respectively) could act as a preview for how much voters have soured on Republicans.

Democrats and Republicans alike have spent heavily in the Kentucky race, where Democrat Zach Dembo faces Republican Ralph Alvarado, so the increased investment is worth noting as a factor on the outcome. If Democrats flip one or both of these races, then it will likely be a long night for the GOP.

Florida also counts and reports its votes quickly, and is home to more than a half dozen races that are viewed as toss-ups or slightly favor one party or the other, so as these districts have projected winners there will be more insight into other races across the country.

Like the Kentucky contest, both parties have spent significant sums in races like the open seat in FL-22 with Democrat Pia Dandiya facing off against Republican Casey Askar and incumbent Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz versus Republican Scott Singer in the newly-redrawn FL-25 race.

Other races to watch: FL-27, NC-11, SC-01, VA-01

Last-minute big spending

In the final seven days of the midterms, a handful of House races have seen more than $10 million in ad spending, according to data from AdImpact. It's a sign of where both parties think the saying "It all comes down to turnout!" is more than a cliche. That includes districts in Michigan, such as MI-07, where progressive Democrat William Lawrence is challenging incumbent Republican Tom Barrett in a seat that Trump carried by just over one percent in 2024 and the open MI-10, where Democrat Christina Hines faces Republican Mike Bouchard.

New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in NY-17 could be one of the rare Republicans who holds on to his seat thanks in part to his party's ad spending advantage in the closing stretch against Democrat Cait Conley.

Three of Iowa's four House races, IA-01, IA-02 and IA-03 are on the list of most expensive, in part because of the competitive governor and U.S. Senate races that are also on the ballot and driving up turnout.

Other races to watch: CO-08, PA-01, WA-03, WI-03

Redistricting

This year's Supreme Court decision rolling back part of the Voting Rights Act led to many Republican-led states redrawing their House maps to eliminate districts that favor Democrats in a typical election year – but this year is not typical.

Now, the political environment has deteriorated so much that seats like AL-02, held by Democrat Shomari Figures, OH-09 held by Democrat Marcy Kaptur and NC-01 held by Democrat Don Davis are all considered toss-ups at best and favoring the Democrats at worst for Republicans.

In Texas, Latino voters seem poised to swing back to Democratic candidates and could prevent Republican Eric Flores from flipping the seat held by Rep. Vicente Gonzalez in TX-34 or Tano Tijerina from unseating Democratic incumbent Henry Cuellar in TX-28.

Other races to watch: CA-22, FL-09, FL-14, TX-35

The outer edges of the map

As results continue to be reported, one thing to watch is how far into conservative communities the increased support for Democrats can go.

One race that has received a surprising amount of ad attention is in Arkansas's 2nd district (AR-02), where incumbent Republican Rep. French Hill faces a well-known challenger in Democrat Chris Jones. By the time polls close, closer to $10 million will have been spent in the final months on the Little Rock-based seat that Trump carried by 15 points in 2024.

There are also many districts in states that redrew their maps where the Republican gerrymander could backfire, like Ohio. In both OH-10 held by Republican Mike Turner and OH-15 held by Republican Mike Carey, Trump won by closer to 10 points in 2024. They're also in a state with competitive governor and Senate races and stretch between the suburbs and exurbs of Dayton and Columbus with an electorate that could swing away from the GOP.

The margin in North Carolina's Senate race, where former Gov. Roy Cooper is expected to win against former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley, could determine if races like NC-03 are in play as well too. Rep. Greg Murphy's district absorbed more Democratic-leaning voters after the latest map redraw.

Other races to watch: NC-09, NY-21, TN-09, WA-05

Copyright 2026 NPR

Election Day is here, and with it comes your last chance to vote in the 2026 general election.

So far, a lot of people have cast ballots. Early voting turnout in L.A. and Orange counties has been higher than the previous midterm cycle in 2022.

The ballot is hefty, asking you to choose among dozens of candidates and weigh in on important local and statewide measures, from a new governor to a billionaire’s tax. L.A. voters will choose who will be mayor and the city attorney, decide on Superior Court judges, school bonds and much more.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Where to vote on Election Day

All vote centers are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday for in-person voting or to drop off your vote-by-mail ballot — in L.A. County, there are more than 600 to choose from. Remember: If you’re in line to vote by 8 p.m., stay in line. You’re legally allowed to cast your ballot if you get in line by the 8 p.m. deadline.

Tip: You aren’t required to bring your vote-by-mail ballot with you — those get voided during the check-in process.

• Find an L.A. County vote center near you (with wait times)
• Find an Orange County vote center near you (with wait times)

If you haven’t registered yet or you’re worried you’ll have an issue, election workers can help you. California allows same-day registration. (Check your registration status here.) If you register at the same time that you vote, you’ll cast a provisional ballot. Officials will verify your registration information and count all ballots of voters who are eligible.

You can also drop your ballot in an official ballot drop box anywhere in the state before 8 p.m.

• Find an Orange County drop box near you
• Find an L.A. County drop box near you
  

If you prefer to mail your ballot in, just make sure it’s postmarked by Tuesday. No postage is required. (Pro tip: If you’re mailing your ballot, take it into the post office to ensure it’s postmarked on time. It'll be counted as long as it arrives within 7 days of Election Day.)

You can also designate another person to return your completed ballot, as long as they aren’t paid. Make sure they fill out the envelope as directed for another person returning your ballot.

Get a free ride to vote in LA

L.A. Metro offers free rides until 11:59 p.m. All buses, trains, Metro Micro and Metro Bike Share services are covered. The promotion on Bike Share covers a 30-minute ride with the code “110326.” LADOT Transit, which includes DASH and Commuter Express rides, is also free.

Here’s a map of ballot drop boxes near Metro stations.

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Metro

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Lyft is offering discounted rides with the code “VOTE26.” You’ll get 50% off up to $10.

What to do if you can't get to your local vote center

Not to worry — if you’re out of town, you can drop off your ballot at an official ballot drop box or polling location anywhere in California. It will be routed to the correct county. There’s no need to drive back to the vote center closest to where you live.

The same goes for voting by mail. Remember: If you have a vote-by-mail ballot, you can get it postmarked at any post office. As long as it’s postmarked by Tuesday and arrives within 7 days of Election Day, it will be counted.

What to do if you make a mistake on your ballot 

If you make an error on your vote-by-mail ballot, you can draw a line through it and make your correction.

You can also go to any vote center, request a new ballot and vote in person.

How to sign your ballot

Make sure to sign your ballot envelope with the signature that matches what your county registrar has on file, which is probably the signature on your driver’s license or state ID. Otherwise, your ballot might get flagged. If that happens, you’ll be notified by mail and will have a chance to fix it.

What to do if you come across an unfamiliar ballot item

It’s not required to vote on every item. If you haven’t had time to research, it’s OK to skip a race or ballot measure you’re unsure about — or several of them if you like. Whatever votes you do cast will still be counted, even if parts of your ballot are left blank.

You can also check out our voter guides.

What to expect after polls close

Follow LAist’s Voter Game Plan. We’ll keep you updated as results come in after 8 p.m.

When will my ballot be counted?

Keep in mind that in tight races particularly, the winner may not be determined for days or weeks after Election Day.

Election results will start posting shortly after the polls close at 8 p.m.

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Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk

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In L.A. County, the first batch of results released includes vote-by-mail ballots received before Election Day (8:30 to 8:45 p.m.), followed by early votes cast at vote centers before Election Day (8:45 to 9:00 p.m.), then votes cast in-person on Election Day. This process is expected to wrap up in the early hours of Nov. 4. Then, additional results will be released following a schedule you can see on the county's site. In California, ballots postmarked on or before Nov. 3 are counted toward the results as long as they arrive within seven days of the election.

County election officials must certify election results by Dec. 3.

Track your ballot

You can track the status of your ballot here:

• Voters in L.A. County
• Voters in Orange County

If your mail-in ballot is rejected for any reason (like a missing or mismatched signature), your county registrar must contact you to give you a chance to fix it.

If you come across any other challenges, be sure to let us know. We have reporters out across L.A. County, along with staff standing by to answer your questions.

Editor's note: A version of this story was first published in 2022, and we continue to update it for subsequent elections.

Altadena artist and muralist Austin Scott is painting a portrait in a courtyard outside the Union Center for the Arts in Little Tokyo. As a steady stream of people walk in, he sketches some details of the face of a woman holding a bouquet of flowers. She wears a wide-brimmed purple hat, her eyes are closed, her face tilts upward toward sunbeams.

Her name is Evelyn McClendon. The retired Pasadena school bus driver was the first victim whose body was found in the rubble of the Eaton Fire in Altadena.

“It’s going to be a portrait of her face made up of little portraits of all the other faces of the people we lost in the fire,” Scott says.

Something like a memorial, he says, for the 19 people who perished.

Altadena muralist and artist Austin Scott paints a portrait of Evelyn McClendon, the first identified victim of the Eaton Fire.

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In front of the building entrance, as people eat tacos and chat, Emeka Chukwurah starts the music.

“Can you see it? We rising up,” he raps as his father, Onochie, and members of their band play drums, guitar and traditional African instruments. They specialize in Nigerian highlife fusion music.

Chukwurah lost his Altadena business, Rhythms of the Village, in the fire. The store sold goods sourced from countries across Africa and hosted drum, dance and Nigerian language classes.

They’re finally about to reopen in a temporary space.

“What we went through is life-changing. It was very traumatic,” Chukwurah says. “But to turn something so traumatic into triumphant moments like these and create new memories, I'm truly grateful for how far we have come.”

Emeka Chukwurah lost his business, Rhythms of the Village, in the Eaton Fire. He's close to reopening in a temporary space.

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Putting real experiences on stage

The idea for tonight’s play was born after the Eaton Fire, when photographer Gayle Nicholls-Ali and her husband, Rasheed, returned to Altadena after a trip to the Bahamas. Their home and community of 30 years were gone.

So they sought out their displaced neighbors. Gayle photographed them. The two collected more than 20 hours of interviews. After the fire, during mutual aid efforts, they happened to meet Sunder Ganglani, the artistic director for Cornerstone Theater Company. With Ganglani’s help, they turned the interview transcripts into the play’s script.

Union Center for the Arts is the theater home of East West Players, considered the nation's first Asian Pacific American theater company.

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“And so the four speakers on stage, all of whom are fire survivors, end up speaking around 20 different people, you know, from every walk of life,” Ganglani says.

Eventually, the nonprofit Extreme Weather Survivors, which connects disaster survivors with each other, got in touch as well. The play became a part of a national tour of similar events hosted by disaster survivors across the country ahead of the midterms.

On this October evening, the crowd settles into the seats of the David Henry Hwang Theater. Gayle Nicholls-Ali takes the stage to applause.

“Tonight is a chance to see one another more fully, to feel something together, to remember that we still belong to Altadena even if we're not living there right at the moment,” she says.

The show begins

The lights go down. Four actors walk onto the stage, one by one.

“My name is Rasheed. My name is Francesca. Shakira. My name is Sam. Darina. My name is Sunny.”

As they speak the stories, Nicholls-Ali rotates pictures of the people she interviewed, projected onto sheets hung behind the actors.

The performers onstage during "From Ashes We Gather."

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The building that houses this theater — the Union Center for the Arts — has been privy to some of the biggest events in Los Angeles history. It was a church for Japanese Americans before their mass incarceration during World War II, then a community center for Black Americans during the Great Migration. It was witness to racial attacks known as the Zoot Suit Riots, and was damaged by the Northridge earthquake.

Today, the art space and theater continues to be a place to process pain, to find refuge.

Like the actors in the play. All of them are fire survivors.

Their voices become a chorus with phrases repeated by survivors.

“Driving back to Altadena for the first time was really chimney after chimney after chimney…”

“They killed 19 of our neighbors.”

“This is our generational wealth. We don't want to lose that.”

The questions they were constantly asked: “How are you? Where are you? What's going on? Were you affected?”

Rasheed Ali performs the piece he composed for the play.

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At the close, the actors exit one by one. Rasheed Ali is alone on stage. The musician and composer sits at the keyboard and plays a piano piece telling the story of Altadena before, during and after the fire.

At the end of the night, some special guests take the stage, including Zaire Calvin, the brother of Evelyn McClendon, whose portrait was being painted earlier. He performs a rap he wrote with his cousin. The show ends with Medusa, who grew up in Altadena and is a hip-hop legend who has collaborated with icons like Tupac Shakur, Erykah Badu and Common.

A healing moment

Gayle Nicholls-Ali thanks the crowd at the end of the show. At left, Zaire Calvin looks on.

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After the show, as everyone packs up, Rasheed Ali is reflective.

“For me, it was a breakthrough,” he says. “The fire has a paralyzing effect on your creativity.”

Gayle Nicholls-Ali feels the same.

“I have not been able to feel creative because this fire is like a big knot in your stomach that you can't get rid of,” she says. “And so this helps to unknot the knot.”

Not just for her and Rasheed, she hopes, but for their community too.

Los Angeles County quietly stopped handing out syringes and pipes at the county’s flagship services hub in Skid Row in August, and has now terminated the contract of the nonprofit that ran harm reduction programs there, the Department of Health Services told LAist.

The pause — which county officials said is temporary — began in August, “in part due to concerns that community stakeholders and local businesses raised to County leadership,” according to a statement provided to LAist by Thomas Lynch, a spokesperson for the county’s Department of Health Services.

The changes come amid a growing cluster of HIV cases in Skid Row and mounting pressure from the Trump administration and neighboring businesses on L.A. programs that distribute drug paraphernalia. Critics argue the programs enable drug addiction and contribute to crime in the area.

The goal of these programs is to keep people who use drugs alive and free of infections like HIV and hepatitis, while working to connect them with services including treatment.

In late August, the county Department of Public Health identified a cluster of HIV cases among people who live in and around Skid Row. As of Sunday, 15 people had been linked to it, 11 of them women, according to Becky Schlikerman, a spokesperson for that department.

In a statement, Schlikerman said both substance use and sexual transmission are being investigated as possible factors, and that the department is working with street medicine teams and harm reduction groups to expand HIV testing and prevention in the area.

“There is an active HIV outbreak in Skid Row, so reducing safe injection supplies to people who use drugs in this moment seems particularly dangerous,” said Ricky Bluthenthal, distinguished professor of population and public health sciences at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

The Skid Row Care Campus still distributes naloxone — the opioid overdose reversal drug — wound care supplies and safe sex supplies, Lynch said, but “distribution of syringes and pipes is currently on pause.”

He also said they have not set a date for syringe services to resume, that the pause applies only at the campus, and that staff are referring people to syringe programs elsewhere.

The state lists 24 authorized syringe services programs in L.A. County, according to the California Department of Public Health. Two are based in or next to Skid Row.

Harm reduction services are provided across much of L.A. County, according to the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

Darren Willett, director of the Center for Harm Reduction in Skid Row, in September of 2021.

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Provider layoffs 

The county has also terminated its contract with Homeless Health Care Los Angeles effective Tuesday, county officials said. The county announced the change in an Aug. 28 statement, the same month the syringe and pipe pause began.

Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, one of L.A.’s best-known harm reduction providers, notified the state in September that it would permanently lay off 134 workers — including 117 employees at the Skid Row Care Campus — effective Tuesday, Nov. 3, according to state Employment Development Department records.

“Right now, HHCLA is being forced to say goodbye to some deeply valued staff and reduce services that some of LA’s most marginalized rely on every day,” the nonprofit wrote in an Instagram post in late September.

In the same post, Homeless Health Care Los Angeles said its jobs program for people in Skid Row “no longer exists.” The nonprofit said the program offered “real income, real pathways forward for people too often shut out of opportunity.”

The county is bringing in nonprofits St. Joseph Center and LA Community Health Project instead, officials said. Meanwhile, Social Model Recovery Systems will expand its existing services and Wesley Health Centers will continue providing healthcare on site.

In statements provided to LAist, L.A. County's health services and homelessness departments described the shake-up as “contractor changes” made as part of an effort to “strengthen operations.” Officials are updating campus protocols, “strengthening on-site safety” and expanding substance use treatment and healthcare, according to those statements.

County officials said they are committed to a transition that avoids disruption for people using the campus.

“Providers are hiring from within the Skid Row community and have worked hard to retain staff who were working for Homeless Health Care Los Angeles,” Lynch told LAist.

Those providers have hired more than 80 people so far, and nearly 90% previously worked for Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, according to the department.

Representatives for Homeless Health Care Los Angeles did not respond to repeated requests for interview or comment.

The nonprofit has worked in Skid Row since the 1980s and ran the campus’s harm reduction and overdose response programs. It celebrated its 40th anniversary this year.

A group of Skid Row community members and laid-off campus workers calling itself the Skid Row Coalition for Community Safety has launched a campaign saying L.A. County is “playing politics with people’s lives.”

“Supervisor Hilda Solis and LA County chose to cowardly abandon the recommendations of public health experts and the Skid Row community,” the group said in a statement on its website.

County Supervisor Hilda Solis, who represents the area and authored the 2022 motion that created the Skid Row Action Plan, told LAist in a statement that the decision to end Homeless Health Care Los Angeles’ contract was made jointly by the county’s health services and homelessness departments.

“Some services have been paused to allow the incoming provider to onboard staff and establish operations,” Solis said. “This is a necessary part of coordinating the transition.”

“I am proud of the Skid Row Action Plan and its commitment to expanding low-barrier services, health care, and pathways to housing,” Solis’ statement continued. “That commitment remains unchanged.”

Solis completes her final term next month and is on Tuesday’s ballot running for California’s 38th Congressional District, which covers parts of eastern Los Angeles and Orange counties but not Skid Row.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis. Solis represents Skid Row and authored a 2022 motion that created the Skid Row Action Plan.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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Criticism of the campus 

The Skid Row Care Campus opened in spring 2025. County officials call it the first community-designed homeless services hub in the nation.

The campus logs more than 2,700 visits a day, a count that includes repeat visitors, according to the county. It costs about $26 million a year to operate. Funding is secured through June 2027. The budget for the following fiscal year has not been finalized.

The campus in the heart of Skid Row drew scrutiny this year. In May, Fox 11 aired a segment featuring Estela Lopez, executive director of the Downtown Industrial Business Improvement District, who called the campus a “meth mansion.” L.A. Mayor Karen Bass told the TV station she was concerned about problems at the campus.

LAPD responded 693 times to the two blocks around it between January and late May, and recorded four homicides there in the first four months of 2026, according to LAPD figures first reported by Fox 11.

On Oct. 8, federal agents and LAPD officers carried out a drug sweep dubbed “Operation Save Skid Row,” centered about a block from the campus. Federal prosecutors charged 28 people and arrested 23, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In July 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to stop funding “so-called ‘harm reduction’” efforts. In April, federal health officials barred grantees from using federal money for pipes and drug test strips, on top of a longstanding ban on federal funds for syringes.

L.A. County officials have not said whether federal policy played a role in the pause. The campus is funded through opioid settlement money, Medi-Cal managed care plans, the state and the county — not federal grants, according to officials.

County officials and employees have credited harm reduction programs with helping drive down overdose deaths, which fell 6% in 2025 — the third straight annual decline — according to the county Department of Public Health.

A person walks past an encampment of unhoused people in the Skid Row community. Skid Row is home to thousands of people who are either experiencing homelessness on the streets or living in shelters.

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Getty Images North America

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Harm reduction’s track record

Harm reduction programs including needle and syringe exchanges started in L.A. more than three decades ago in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. L.A. County declared a local public health emergency in 2000 to authorize syringe exchange under a new state law, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report.

People who use fentanyl in L.A. have increasingly shifted from injecting it to smoking it, according to a 2025 study co-authored by Bluthenthal, with USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

Bluthenthal called the recent syringe and pipe distribution pause at the Skid Row Care Campus “obviously a setback.”

“Harm reduction programs, through providing social and material support, have been one of the most consistent pathways to treatment for people who are currently using illicitly purchased drugs,” he said.

In a statement on the pause, officials at L.A. County’s Department of Health Services said people who receive syringe services are three times more likely to reduce or stop using drugs and five times more likely to enter substance use treatment.

John Raphling, an organizer with the Los Angeles Community Action Network based in Skid Row, said his group is “extremely concerned that the county is cutting these services” and that Skid Row residents “were not at all consulted.”

“Harm reduction services, like those provided by Homeless Health Care, help save lives, prevent the spread of disease, and allow people to survive and work through their recovery,” Raphling said.

Some Skid Row residents see it differently — including Don Garza, who has lived in the neighborhood for 27 years and resides in a single-room-occupancy building there.

“It’s not helping anyone,” Garza told LAist. “It exponentially accelerates the overdose deaths.”

“The part of harm reduction that we still need is the overdose prevention, but without the pipes and the needles,” Garza said. “We still need the Narcan because Skid Row is not going anywhere, and people are still gonna OD, and they're gonna die.”