The Brief

As journalists, we measure success not just in clicks or conversions, but in what happens after a story makes its way into the world. Impact isn't always immediate or easily quantified. It can surface quietly — in an email from a listener, a shift in public understanding, or a decision made differently because someone finally has the information they need. In a nonprofit newsroom, those moments matter as much as any headline.

Over the past year, NPR's reporting has met audiences where they are, reflecting the realities they're living every day. Coverage of tariffs, affordability and the cost of living connected sprawling economic policy to household grocery receipts and credit card balances. Investigations explained how decisions made in Washington ripple outward — to farmers, veterans, federal workers and families struggling to stay afloat.

For many listeners and readers, the impact was practical and validating: tools to manage debt, clarity about a confusing economy, or simply the feeling of being seen.

Other stories carried consequences far beyond the personal. Reporting helped reinstate sidelined CDC scientists, prompted congressional investigations and new legislation, restored lifesaving grants, and pushed companies and institutions toward greater transparency and accountability. From the ethics of AI-generated music to secretive government data practices, NPR journalists illuminated systems often hidden from public view — and those stories didn't stop at awareness; they led to action.

And in places where the human cost is hardest to capture, NPR stayed present. From Gaza to Zambia, from immigration courts to National Guard group chats, our reporting centered the lived experiences behind policy and power. In response, listeners told us they donated, spoke up, reconsidered long-held assumptions, or felt less alone.

What follows is just a sampling of the stories NPR staff believe made some of the deepest ripples this year — reminders of what rigorous, compassionate journalism can do, and why the work remains as urgent as ever.

— Thomas Evans, editor in chief of NPR

Extensive coverage of tariffs, the cost of living and affordability reflects NPR audience's reality

"The tariffs story highlighted how big, macroeconomic stories like tariffs were impacting individual Americans, bringing home why politics matters — and telling stories in the way NPR does best," says reporter Emily Feng.

NPR reporters stayed on top of this coverage, from asking Americans to send in their receipts to show tariffs in effect to polling Americans about how they're feeling about the economy. NPR journalists also kept a tracker of Trump's tariff threats and trade deals, as well as continued coverage of the cost of living crisis many Americans are feeling.

Life Kit also created a month-long newsletter series (that you can still sign up for!) about how to pay down credit card debt. More than 100 people emailed us saying how much they appreciated the newsletter and how it helped validate the measures they were taking to pay off their credit card debt. "With helpful newsletters like this, I'm confident I can start and stay on the right path," one subscriber said.

An investigation contributes to CDC lab scientists getting reinstated

When all 27 scientists in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Viral Hepatitis were put on administrative leave in April, they were in the middle of investigations in several states. No other lab in the world has the capacity to genetically trace hepatitis outbreaks — which can be spread in food or by sharing needles — to their source.

NPR exclusively interviewed five scientists at the CDC about the lab's closure and explained the nature of the work the lab does in an investigation. In June, all 27 of the lab's scientists were told they could come back to work at the CDC, along with more than 400 other workers whose layoffs were revoked. "People who worked at the lab attributed getting their jobs back in part to NPR's early reporting on their predicament," reporter Chiara Eisner says.

Reporting on DOGE leads to an independent investigation and new legislation

Jenna McLaughlin's exclusive reporting on how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data quickly led to outcry from more than 50 lawmakers demanding an independent investigation into DOGE's activities at the National Labor Relations Board, the Inspector General for the NLRB launching an investigation, and congressional demands that Microsoft provide information about DOGE's use of code to remove sensitive data.

NPR's exclusive reporting on a DOGE staffer's high-level access to an internal farm loan database also prompted immediate reaction on Capitol Hill, demands for answers from lawmakers, and even spurred lawmakers to pen new legislation in response. "The story illuminated the impact of DOGE's secret activities on Americans outside of Washington, particularly farmers who rely on government subsidies and have already been struggling under the collective weight of tariffs, climate change, agricultural consolidation, and other challenges," McLaughlin says.

An exploration of the ethics of labeling AI-generated music helps lead to more transparency

"After an AI project posing as a group of human musicians blew up on Spotify over the summer, I wanted to understand how streaming platforms are responding to the rise of generative AI," reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento says. She spoke with a professor of digital forensics, the research team behind an AI detection tool, and a journalist/author who investigated Spotify's business practices. They all emphasized that transparency about generative AI usage is key to empowering both musicians and music fans. "A month later — and after I asked Spotify directly if they had considered implementing an AI tagging system — the company announced it would roll out a new AI spam filter on the platform," Gomez Sarmiento says.

Reporting helps reinstate a grant that could save kids' lives

Elissa Nadworny reported on a 4-year-old named Caleb who has a failing heart, and how a university researcher's federal grant, which could help kids like him, was canceled. That story helped Cornell University make a deal with the White House, reinstating the doctor's grant. "Calling Caleb's mom Nora and telling her the good news was certainly a career highlight," Nadworny says.

Caleb had a question after learning his story might help families like his. "Did I change the whole world?" he asked. Yes, Caleb. You might just have.

"Then, on Thanksgiving, I got more great news: Our story had led to changes in a clinical trial, which meant Caleb was able to switch to a different driver for his artificial heart," Nadworny says. Instead of just 30 minutes running on battery, his new one can be unplugged for up to 8 hours.

An investigation leads to Congress calling for a crackdown on companies charging disabled vets

A group of 43 members of Congress have called for action against unaccredited companies that charge veterans for help filing for disability benefits with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The move came in response to reporting from NPR that showed the claims consulting industry is using aggressive tactics to make millions off veterans, despite warnings from the VA's lawyers that doing so may be in violation of federal law.

In an encrypted group chat, a group of National Guard members expressed worry over Trump's deployments. NPR sat down with them to hear more

"During a year of President Trump's extraordinary deployments of the National Guard to several cities around the country, this was one of the first times we heard in depth from several guard members about how they're feeling and what they're thinking about," reporter Kat Lonsdorf says.

Telling their stories helped people with HIV get life-saving medication

A few months after President Trump abruptly dismantled USAID, a reporting team went to Zambia to investigate the impact. They found people with HIV whose U.S.-funded clinics, which had provided their daily medication to suppress the virus, had shut their doors without warning. Without the pills, people were getting sick and showing signs of HIV developing to AIDS.

After our stories ran, the Zambian government doubted our reporting — until they did their own investigation. They then worked with a local pastor we'd profiled to help people in the community get their life-saving medication.

We tracked the loss of thousands of jobs as corporate America moves away from DEI

NPR financial correspondent Maria Aspan was first to report on several parts of corporate America's retreat from diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Her in-depth reporting about one veteran DEI executive told the wider story of the emotional and personal toll this corporate rollback has taken on people working in this once-red-hot field.

Aspan's reporting resonated deeply with NPR's audiences. "As someone who has dedicated over two decades to DEI work, I felt every word of this," one reader wrote in response.

Reporting on missing children in Syria who were likely being trafficked leads to arrests and other action

"This reporting has had a cascading impact," senior producer Liana Simstrom says. It helped trigger the arrests of several senior orphanage workers that NPR had interviewed and photographed, including one who was widely suspected of trafficking the children. It also helped lead to the creation of a high-level government committee to trace the missing children. Our story also led to the SOS Children's Village acknowledging that they did not know the full extent of the trafficking of children that happened under their watch.

A steady stream of stories from Gaza kept a spotlight on the conflict

An NPR exclusive dove deeply into how U.S. policy on Israel's war in Gaza led to a declaration of famine in the enclave after nearly two years of war. In interviews with more than two dozen former senior U.S. officials, NPR reporters found that many people who were directly involved in shaping U.S. policy were now asking: Did we do enough to prevent this? "We were struck by just how many former U.S. officials wanted to talk. The conversations were emotional and raw, and offered a look into the incredibly difficult and complicated relationship between the U.S. and Israel as the conflict progressed," reporter Kat Lonsdorf says.

It has been difficult to chronicle the enormous losses to Palestinian families during Israel's offensive in Gaza, one of the most destructive in recent history. An Israeli strike on a Gaza apartment building -- one of the deadliest of the Israel-Hamas war -- killed 132 members of one family last year. The few survivors documented the dead. Working with journalists in Gaza, we reconstructed what happened to this large family in a single moment.

NPR reporter in Gaza Anas Baba reported on the quest for food in the territory. He wrote: "I faced Israeli military fire, private U.S. contractors pointing laser beams at my forehead, crowds with knives fighting for rations and masked thieves — to get food from a group supported by the U.S. and Israel called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation." The foundation has since stopped operations.

Many people wrote in response to Planet Money's reporting on money falling apart in Gaza, saying that it represented the human day-to-day experience of life in Gaza and of being connected and wanting to help someone in the enclave. "Many listeners also tell us they donated to the characters in the piece as a result," executive producer Alex Goldmark says.

We told stories of the chaos of the Trump administration's cuts to the federal workforce and the people impacted

Throughout all the twists and turns, labor and workplace reporter Andrea Hsu was there every step of the way covering developments to the federal workforce and speaking to people directly impacted. "We stayed on top of the story and reported on what ultimately happened in these cases, and the impact it had on people's lives," Hsu says.

Early on during the chaos of the first "fork in the road" buyout offer and the purge of probationary employees — mostly more recent hires — multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration cited news stories, including from NPR. "There was so little official information coming out at the time that the lawyers were relying on media reports," Hsu says, including NPR's reporting.

Hsu shared stories from some of the 317,000 workers who are now out of the federal government throughout the year, interviewing military veterans who were summarily fired from their civilian jobs and dedicated civil servants who chose to walk away, among many others.

Reporting on a Trump administration citizenship tool finds U.S. citizens removed from voting rolls

For much of the year, NPR's Jude Joffe-Block and Miles Parks have reported on the DOGE-aided expansion of a federal data system known as SAVE and how it's been turned into a de facto tool to verify U.S. citizenship. Trump and his allies have long falsely claimed that U.S. elections are rife with noncitizens voting.

Joffe-Block and Parks broke the first story about how the administration overhauled SAVE in June and have been on the story aggressively ever since, reporting on how states were being encouraged to run their entire voter lists through it and how close to 50 million registered voters have been scrutinized.

More recently, Joffe-Block found that U.S. citizens are being flagged by the tool, and told the story of one U.S. citizen who was removed from the rolls as a result. Their reporting has been cited in multiple lawsuits around the system.

From ICE to immigration judges, NPR continued to report on immigration issues

NPR was the first to highlight the administration's practice of firing immigration judges and tracked multiple rounds of dismissals over the course of the year. Ximena Bustillo's reporting on understaffed immigration courts, for example, showed the human cost of the layoffs, as well as the cost to due process. She also worked with intern Anusha Mathur to show that judges with a background in immigrant defense were more likely to lose their jobs. The reporting helped uncover a lesser-known facet of the administration's crackdown and set the bar for coverage for other outlets.

"My story explicitly calling out DHS for calling on DACA recipients to self-deport definitely caused a stir," Bustillo says. "It's in the vein of exclusive reporting on how other people who had some immigration process or deportation protection have seen that pulled away and the impact that has had on the ground."

After NPR's reporting, legislation was introduced to ensure judges who retire or resign can't avoid some investigations into misconduct

Following NPR's reporting, the top Democratic lawmaker on the House Judiciary Committee introduced legislation that would ensure judges who retire or resign are not able to avoid or short-circuit investigations into allegations of misconduct. The Judicial Conference of the United States — the policymaking body for the federal courts — proposed new rules that would cover attorneys' fees for clerks and other employees who file meritorious workplace complaints and that would guarantee that judges who preside over complaints would not work in the same district as the alleged wrongdoers.

Federal court employees told NPR reporter Carrie Johnson that some individual judges have discussed the story with their clerks. She also heard that at a recent training session in Washington, D.C., attendees asked questions about the limitations of the judiciary's current system for assessing claims of misconduct by citing the NPR stories.
Copyright 2025 NPR

The Legislature wants to make putting on a California police or firefighter uniform more lucrative.

Three bills are moving forward that would either raise pay for state firefighters or boost retirement benefits for public safety personnel.

Their supporters say the measures are meant to compensate people who risk their lives for others and who by the nature of their jobs are exposed to career-shortening hazards. The proposals are sailing through the Legislature with bipartisan support and overwhelming majorities of lawmakers voting for them.

“Every day has a cost, and it's one that we pay with our lives,” Darrell Roberts, president of the union California Professional Firefighters said at a recent hearing where he spoke in favor of a bill that would let public safety employees retire at 55, two years earlier than currently allowed. “This job is physically and mentally demanding in the extreme and asking us to work until 57 is pushing us not just to our limit but beyond it.”

The proposals carry significant price tags and could potentially drive up annual spending by hundreds of millions of dollars. They could also swell the state’s long-term liabilities by billions of dollars. That could make them a tough sell to Gov. Gavin Newsom given that the state anticipates deficits in the near future.

The two retirement bills in particular are rekindling memories of California’s pension crisis in the Great Recession, when major funds lost tens of billions of dollars. At the time, taxpayer advocates drew attention to sweetened benefits that former Gov. Gray Davis signed into law just a few years before the crash, when the stock market was booming.

Marcia Fritz, an accountant and longtime Californmia pension watchdog, said the current push to expand public safety retirement benefits is similar to the law Davis signed. During Davis’ tenure, California’s pension funds were flush from a soaring stock market fueled by tech companies, and lawmakers believed the good run would continue.

Today, the two largest pension funds — CalPERS and CalSTRS — have not fully recovered from their recession losses. But they have been beating their earnings targets, thanks in part to a stock market again propelled by the tech sector.

To Fritz, the lawmakers advancing the bill are “drinking the Kool Aid that the markets are never going to go down,” she said. “We’re the ones paying for it with reduced services.”

California scaled back benefits for workers hired after 2012 when former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that compelled employees to work longer before earning a full pension and required them to kick in more money to fund their own pensions.

CalPERS has estimated that Brown’s pension reform saved government agencies $4 billion in its first 10 years and projected it would reduce their expenses by another $24 billion over the next decade.

To taxpayer advocates like Fritz, that’s a sign tthe law is working and should continue as is. To the public safety unions, that means the government agencies have capacity to increase benefits without fully unwinding Brown’s law.

The bills moving forward would:

• Allow public safety employees to retire at age 55 rather than 57. Assembly Bill 1383 also would allow unions to negotiate more generous retirement formulas that would give public safety employees up to 3% of their income for each year in uniform. And it would boost the cap on annual pensionable earnings by almost $60,000 to $249,000 a year. 
• Create a new deferred retirement program for California Highway Patrol officers and Cal Fire firefighters. AB 1054 is meant to give officers and firefighters an incentive to keep working later in their careers by allowing them to accumulate money that they could cash out in a single lump sum check when they retire.
• Increase Cal Fire firefighters’ pay by recommending a new formula for their raises. AB 2129 would encourage the governor’s office to bring their compensation closer to — but not necessarily equal to — the average of what 20 local fire departments pay. 

How much do they cost?

The bill that would allow police and firefighters to retire earlier carries the biggest potential cost, requiring an additional $282 million in annual contributions to the California Public Employees’ Retirement system and increasing its long-term liabilities by $4.8 billion.

Its price tag would increase if cities, counties and other local government agencies agree to offer more generous pension formulas to police and firefighters, as the bill would allow. If that happens, CalPERS estimates it would cost an additional $353 million in annual contributions and further swell the fund’s long-term debt.

Those estimates do not account for the 20 county-run pension systems that are separate from CalPERS.

The potential costs are one reason California cities and counties oppose the measure. “We do definitely support strong retirement benefits, but those benefits must remain sustainable and fiscally responsible for our local agencies,” Johnnie Pina, a lobbyist for the League of California Cities, said at a recent Senate hearing.

It’s less clear what the other two measures will cost.

Supporters of the bill that would give CHP officers and Cal Fire firefighters access to an alternate retirement investment program during their last five years of service say it is intended to be cost neutral, although similar plans offered by cities and counties have driven up expenses. The bill requires CalPERS to assess the program every five years, which union representatives say would allow lawmakers to make adjustments if they see unintended drawbacks.

The measure that would nudge Newsom to raise pay for Cal Fire firefighters has an uncertain cost because it’s written in a way that would allow flexibility for the governor’s office.

It encourages the governor to bargain “in good faith” toward bringing Cal Fire compensation closer to what local governments pay, but does not mandate it. A 2023 state compensation survey found that local fire departments pay firefighters between 11% and 29% more than Cal Fire.

"Instead of being the lowest paid, we will inevitably be somewhere in the middle" if the bill becomes law, firefighter union lobbyist Terry McHale told lawmakers at a hearing earlier this year.

Last year, Newsom rejected a similar measure that was more explicit in demanding an increase in Cal Fire pay. Newsom wrote in a veto message that it would “create significant cost pressures for the state and circumvent the collective bargaining process.” Officials estimate it would have cost between $373 million and $609 million in its first year.

Cal Fire’s firefighter union essentially wants what only one other group of state workers has: Raises based on what other government agencies pay. CHP officers receive annual raises based on what several other large California police departments pay; every other state worker union has to negotiate compensation with the governor.

Gov. Gavin Newsom addresses the media during a press conference unveiling his revised 2026-27 budget proposal at the Capitol Annex Swing Space in Sacramento on May 14, 2026.

(

Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

/

CalMatters

)

What will Newsom do?

All three measures face a major obstacle later this month in the Senate Appropriations Committee, which has the power to sideline bills over cost concerns. If they clear that committee, the bills have a good chance of reaching Newsom’s desk.

At the most recent hearing, lawmakers said increasing incentives to recruit and retain first responders was so important that they’d cut other programs to make room for the additional spending. They commended emergency personnel who rushed to a chemical spill in Orange County in May not knowing if the danger would harm them.

“I still get goosebumps for these firefighters and their families that had to know that they're that they're they were putting their lives online to save that explosion from happening, which they actually end up doing,” Sen. Tony Strickland, a Republican representing Huntington Beach, said at the hearing.

“You can't put a price tag on that,” he said.

The unions have also been a steady presence in the Capitol throughout Newsom’s tenure. Firefighter unions have contributed $6.2 million to lawmakers and legislative campaigns since 2019 and the law enforcement organization known as PORAC has spent $4.5 million over that time, according to CalMatters Digital Democracy database.

They’ve also been reliable allies to Newsom. California Professional Firefighters and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association were two of the largest donors in helping the governor defeat a 2021 recall campaign.

But the unions’ support for Newsom and other lawmakers doesn’t guarantee that he’ll sign the bills. Newsom was mayor of San Francisco during the Great Recession, and he backed a successful ballot measure that required city employees to put more of their own money toward their pensions.

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

It might not feel like it, but Southern California is in for a slight cooldown this weekend before the heat comes back.

The National Weather Service says temperatures today will drop a degree or two. At the beaches, the daily highs will range from 74 to 80 degrees. For the inland coast, expect max temperatures to reach 87 to 93 degrees. Inland areas of Orange County will see temperatures from 79 to 87 degrees.

Meanwhile, L.A. County valleys will stay below 100 degrees today with highs expected to reach 89 to 99 degrees. Over in the Inland Empire, we're going to see temperatures range from 91 to 100 degrees.

In Coachella Valley, temperatures will be about 3 degrees cooler with highs from 110 to 115 degrees. And in the Antelope Valley, expect highs from 99 to 108 degrees, and 93 to 98 degrees for the cooler hills.

Looking ahead to the weekend, daily highs for the valley communities are expected to max out in the lower to mid-90s. Coachella Valley will also see temperatures drop a few more degrees. Come Monday, temperatures will begin to warm up again.

Need a place to get out of the heat?

You can find cooling centers via the following links:

• L.A. County
• Orange County
• San Bernardino County
• Riverside County

The future of air conditioning could be in a train station in Anaheim.

The 3 million people who pass through Orange County’s ARTIC station annually are experiencing climate control by radiant cooling — a technology experts say could eventually replace the forced-air AC we’re used to.

AC has become one of the world’s most used defenses against extreme heat, but it’s simultaneously making that heat worse.

Traditional AC systems consume vast amounts of electricity and often rely on greenhouse gases, helping fuel a vicious cycle: More warming drives more AC, which drives more warming.

Radiant cooling offers a greener, more efficient approach that experts say is gaining popularity in homes across California.

How radiant cooling works

A traditional air conditioning system works by circulating a refrigerant that rapidly changes between liquid and gas states, absorbing heat from indoor air and releasing it outside. These forced-air systems push cooled air through ducts in a building — resulting in that familiar blast of cool, dry wind from a vent in the ceiling. The process runs on electricity, and common refrigerants can be powerful greenhouse gases if they leak.

Heat pumps use a similar refrigerant cycle but can reverse direction, moving heat out of a building in summer and into it in winter.

In a radiant cooling system, however, air-to-water heat pumps transfer energy into a centralized water loop, often using less refrigerant. Radiant cooling systems circulate their chilled water through coils embedded behind panels that can be in floors, walls or ceilings. The water in these radiant systems is typically cooled to about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, while the chilled panels remain between 68 and 75 degrees.

A person standing nearby then radiates body heat toward the cooler panels, which act as a sponge for thermal energy. This creates a sensation of coolness even if the surrounding air remains warm.

“The idea is that basically you take advantage of thermal radiation to exchange heat between people and surfaces,” said Aaswath Raman, an engineering professor at UCLA.

Saul De Los Santos, a sales associate at Messana Hydronic Technologies, compared radiant cooling to the feeling of walking into a parking structure.

“As soon as you walk into that parking garage, even on a hot day, you start feeling much cooler,” De Los Santos said. “And that’s because those cold walls are extracting heat from your body, leaving you cooler.”

Water can carry 3,400 times more heat energy than air, making radiant cooling significantly more energy-efficient compared to traditional AC systems.

“You need a much smaller volume of water to distribute the same amount of energy through a space,” said Carlos Duarte, an assistant researcher at UC Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment.

The ARTIC train station in Anaheim is one of just a few places in Southern California using radiant cooling today.

(

Sena Chang

/

LAist

)

How it feels

Only a handful of radiant cooling systems exist across Southern California, mostly in commercial and office spaces.

One is the United States Courthouse in downtown L.A.

Another is Anaheim’s relatively new train station. I went there to feel what it was like on Tuesday.

It was sunny and a hot 84 degrees outside. But inside the ARTIC station, the heat seemed to loosen its grip over my body at once, leaving me feeling deeply comfortable. It was subtle and all-consuming at the same time. Because unlike traditional AC, there was no sudden chill on my skin.

I walked to a nearby hotel to compare radiant cooling to traditional AC. I immediately felt cool air blowing over me, and there was an artificiality about the chill of the lobby that left me a little too cold.

The future of radiant cooling

Preliminary research suggests people experience higher levels of comfort with radiant cooling compared to conventional AC.

But Duarte said the U.S. lacks the infrastructure to implement radiant systems on a residential level.

“I think one of the biggest challenges is that many installers or contractors are not familiar with radiant systems, and there needs to be a lot of coordination among the trades,” he said.

A huge barrier for homeowners is cost. Purchasing and installing a radiant system on a home can cost around $20 per square foot. By comparison, a ducted HVAC installation costs $5 to $10 per square foot, while a mini-split system averages $3 to $10 per square foot.

For now, residential radiant systems remain a “relatively niche concept,” according to Raman.

But experts say radiant cooling is becoming more widespread across the state, and researchers are eyeing the 2028 Olympics as an opportunity to deploy these systems on a larger scale.

“We’ve certainly seen an increase in sales specifically for California, but also across the U.S.,” said De Los Santos, who works on residential applications of radiant cooling.

Beyond the home, radiant cooling is highly applicable in open-air spaces like the ARTIC station, where cooling vast quantities of air can be impractical.

In 2025, Raman and a team of researchers designed an outdoor radiant cooling system on the UCLA campus and at the San Fernando Swap Meet that made an area feel up to 10 degrees cooler.

“One thing we’re hoping is that as part of the Olympics, we can also have this as something that’s available for visitors,” Raman said.

“That will also showcase to the world the potential of this technology.”

The Los Angeles region usually knows by the end of June whether homelessness went up or down.

Not this year, as L.A.’s lead homelessness agency is first waiting for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to validate the region’s annual homeless count data before releasing it publicly.

It’s unclear when the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority plans to publish the 2026 results.

Last week, LAHSA officials said it was possible the release wouldn’t happen at all this year because HUD suspended it from federal grant activity.

This week, after a federal judge intervened, a LAHSA spokesperson told LAist the agency expects to announce the release date for the 2026 homeless count numbers in the “near future.”

“Several factors can influence the announcement date, including the validation process with HUD,” LAHSA spokesperson Ahmad Chapman said.

LAHSA officials said they first submitted its homeless count data to HUD for quality analysis on April 30. HUD does not require these reviews to be completed before regions publish their data. But after last year’s HUD review found errors, LAHSA opted to wait “to ensure total data integrity,” said interim CEO Gita O’Neill

Suspended, then unsuspended

On June 11, while that review was taking place, HUD suspended LAHSA from federal grant activity, pending an investigation into alleged mismanagement.

LAHSA then filed a lawsuit challenging the suspension and a separate petition for relief. The agency mentioned in its June 29 lawsuit that it was still in the process of reviewing 2026 homeless count data with a technical assistance provider contracted by HUD.

“If the proposed HUD suspension takes effect, LAHSA likely will not be able to complete its 2026 PIT Count process,” LAHSA’s legal complaint states. “Should that occur, HUD would not have an accurate count for the Los Angeles area.”

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter issued a legal order pausing HUD’s effort to suspend LAHSA pending an Aug. 6 court date.

LAHSA officials said that ruling means the agency can continue drawing down funding from HUD, signing funding agreements with the housing agency, and participating in other federal activities.

HUD said no action it has taken in any way prevents LAHSA from publishing its own homeless count data, according to a spokesperson.

But HUD’s suspension put the troubled agency’s responsibilities and funding in limbo, and experts said it’s possible the suspension could delay the release of L.A.’s homeless count.

“Given the unprecedented nature of the HUD suspension and LAHSA's subsequent lawsuit, I imagine the staff capacity over there is somewhat limited to make it all happen,” said Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow with the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Why the count matters

HUD mandates the homeless counts across the country to help determine priorities for hundreds of millions in federal funds to address homelessness.

L.A.’s annual count has become increasingly consequential and controversial in L.A. County, which is home to the largest unhoused population in the U.S., estimated at more than 72,000 in 2025.

Last year’s count found homelessness had dropped for two years in a row, and was down 4% in L.A. County and 3.4% in the city of L.A. from the year before.

Those declines are a major talking point in L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ reelection campaign. The region’s homelessness system has since experienced major shifts in funding, making this year’s results even more anticipated.

Past counts

From 2016 to 2020, LAHSA published its annual unhoused point-in-time count results in May or early June. The count was canceled in 2021. In 2022, they were released Sept. 8. Then back to June release dates in 2023 and 2024.

Last year, in an unprecedented move, LAHSA released early preliminary results in March 2025. It was a month after the count wrapped and just before L.A. County leaders voted to divert more than $300 million from the agency into its own new homelessness department.

LAHSA released official results in July. Then, in October, LAHSA put out “finalized” 2025 homeless count results with revisions based on a data review by HUD.

Waiting on the numbers

This year’s L.A.-area homeless count happened in January. And unlike last year, no preliminary raw data or official results have been released.

Orange County, San Diego and San Francisco each publicly released 2026 results in May. Pasadena released its homeless count findings in June. Long Beach and Glendale still haven’t.

“These types of delays are incredibly common in reporting out homeless count data,” Visotzky said. “In fact, many communities across California have not yet reported out their 2026 Point-in-Time Count data.”

In April, a LAHSA spokesperson told LAist this year’s final release would arrive in “late spring or early summer,” but cautioned “there are some aspects of the post-counting process that affect when the results are released that are beyond LAHSA's control.”

At an April 24 LAHSA Commission meeting, O’Neill said the agency planned to submit its homeless count data to HUD on April 30 for review and validation. She clarified that, unlike last year, LAHSA would wait until the HUD review and validation processes are complete before releasing any data.

“ After HUD's validation process is complete, we look forward to releasing the results, hopefully this summer,” O’Neill said.

At the meeting, O’Neill told LAHSA commissioners that HUD’s review process usually takes about a month, with data coming back by May 30, but explained that the exact timing was unknown and outside of LAHSA’s control.

Two months later, both LAHSA and HUD decline to say whether the federal review had been completed.

After HUD completes its review, LAHSA officials said they will require additional time to prepare the data for release.

“Since 2022, the count has been released in June, July, and September,” LAHSA’s Chapman told LAist. “There is no deadline for announcing the results of the homeless count, so it cannot be late.”