Here’s What Progress LA's Mayor Has Made On Homelessness So Far

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass says she’s made major progress in tackling the homelessness problem at the one-year mark of her time in office.

But in a data review Wednesday with reporters, she also acknowledged shortcomings: City officials don’t know where several thousand people they’ve tried to help this year have ended up and she said the time it takes to move people from temporary to permanent housing averages one-and-a-half to two years.

“No one, to me, should leave a motel, tiny home or any other system and [the city] not know where they are or why they left,” Bass said. “But the system up until now has not been focused on outcomes.”

A breakdown of the numbers

This year, data the Bass administration revealed during a press conference shows 21,694 people have moved into temporary housing, compared to 16,931 the year before.

An estimated 3,551 people have also been permanently housed through new government-funded housing units, up from 1,361 the year before.

And 7,717 people were housed with vouchers, up from 5,223 the year before.

When it comes to how many people are staying housed, it’s unclear whether the Bass administration has made substantial progress since 2022.

About 65% of those who entered temporary housing this year have stayed in housing. Some of them are still in temporary housing, while others have secured permanent housing.

But the remaining 35%, or about 7,500 people, have left these housing programs, which include tiny home villages, family shelters, emergency shelters, and Inside Safe, Bass’ signature program to move people indoors from encampments.

Officials said Inside Safe has an 81% retention rate.

City officials didn’t have temporary housing retention rate numbers from 2022, so they could not say whether the current retention rate is an increase or decrease from last year.

Va Lecia Adams Kellum, CEO for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), said she was “really proud” the city was able to retain as many people as they did in temporary housing, given that many of them include congregate shelters that lack privacy and are generally less desirable for people to stay in for long periods of time.

“Providers are doing a heck of a job keeping people inspired,” she said.

The city’s data gaps

Some of those who left temporary housing may have returned to the streets, or been incarcerated or hospitalized, according to officials. But for most of that 7,500, Bass said the city just doesn’t know where they are — a gap in the city’s knowledge that she attributed to problems with data collection systems.

Bass added that her administration was working closely with LAHSA, which manages the data for temporary housing programs, to improve these data systems so that information would be available in the future.

Bass said initially when she came into office, she assumed that people would spend three to six months in temporary housing before being able to secure a spot in permanent housing. She’s since discovered that the timeline is much longer — closer to one-and-a-half to two years.

She said waiting months or years in temporary housing was preferable to what she described as the prior administration’s de facto policy of expecting people to await permanent housing from the streets.

Despite the city’s efforts, Bass said she was concerned many more people would fall into homelessness in the city due to the end of COVID-era renter protections. Starting in February, the city’s rent freeze will no longer be in place. It restricted rent increases for rent-controlled apartments across the city since March of 2020.