Homelessness rises in Long Beach for second year in a row

Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent to curb homelessness, the number of people without a home in Long Beach rose for the second year in a row — with a larger spike for people who are “chronically homeless” and typically most difficult to keep in permanent housing, officials announced Monday.

It’s a reversal of fortune for a city that two years ago declared it had “turned the tide” on homelessness. Since then, Long Beach has seen at least 10% more people living on the streets, and homelessness has increased in six of the last seven years — even with successes in expanding its shelter system and moving people into permanent housing.

Monday’s report relies on a “Point in Time” measurement, a local census of people in shelters and living outside, and those reporting chronic problems in finding shelter.

Conducted by hundreds of volunteers during three days in January, the count found 3,729 people were living in interim housing, a car, van, RV, tent or makeshift shelter in Long Beach — a 3.7% bump compared with 3,595 people counted the previous year and more than double the number of those reported in 2019.

Public health officials and academic experts say the increase reflects a sharp rise in rents, the conclusion of some pandemic-era programs and the abrupt end or delay of millions in health department funding.

But efforts to house people, which include hundreds of millions of dollars spent on shelter, permanent housing and outreach, have failed to stem the number of street encampments, as reflected in the report and interviews with outreach workers and shelter operators.

There are some bright spots: More unhoused people are living in shelters or interim housing than last year, about 30.6% versus last year’s 27.5%. That comes as Long Beach has increased the beds in its shelter system by 12%, bringing it to a total 1,521 shelter beds locally. The city also reported that 1,702 people were moved into permanent housing.

But the proportion of people newly homeless within the past year also rose slightly, to 12.4% from 10.9%, while the share of people self-reporting as chronically homelessness, meaning long-term or repeated bouts of homelessness tied with mental illness or substance use, rose by double digits to 58% from 46.7%.

At the Multi-Service Center, which recently reopened after renovations, staffers say they are taking in an enormous amount of newly homeless people — more than twice the amount observed in the Point in Time count.

Last year alone, the facility saw more than 3,000 new people — at least 20 to 30 new people on a daily basis.

Meanwhile the situation outside Long Beach has grown more favorable, or at least stayed flat. Pasadena’s homeless population dropped by four people this year while Orange County saw just over 1,000 fewer people this year than in 2024 — a 13.7% drop in their biennial report.

While it has yet to report this year’s count, Los Angeles County last year saw a 4% drop in its homeless population — the second decline in a row.

In struggling to explain the continued growth of homelessness in Long Beach, public health officials acknowledged that the reasons are not fully known, but pointed to the growing body of evidence that housing costs are an underlying cause.

Homeless respondents have consistently reported that a high cost of living, followed by familial strife and mental illness, is the primary reason they’re living on the streets. Forty percent said financial and employment were their top reason, followed by family disruption and mental health.

There is also a massive demand in Long Beach for rental subsidies. In the three months of a new rental aid program — which officials say will only be able to help 250 households a year — the city has already received more than 3,500 applications. Of those, about 50 households have been enrolled.

City officials also pointed the finger at federal cuts to the Emergency Housing Voucher program. The program, launched in 2021, provides housing for 582 households locally — particularly for those considered chronically homeless or at risk of falling back into homelessness.

But funding for the program is set to run out, far faster than expected, as rising rent costs have coincided with a Republican-led Congress unwilling to renew it.

Local housing officials say they can only transition 125 households to a different voucher program, leaving 375 households without help once the EHV program’s funding runs dry in October. EHV recipients will be given at least 60 days’ notice before their rental assistance runs out, officials added.

Federal housing aid reaches only about one in four eligible households in Long Beach. About 8,000 households in Long Beach rely on federal housing choice vouchers.

There’s also an increasing shift, officials say, of unhoused people who come from outside of Long Beach.

More than half of the people surveyed, 50.9%, said they had lost stable housing somewhere other than Long Beach, a finding city officials said reinforced the sense that homelessness in Southern California does not respect municipal boundaries.

It’s a trend seen elsewhere in the city. Jeff Levine, who runs the Long Beach Rescue Mission, said many people entering his shelters come from Orange County and downtown Los Angeles, saying the former lacks amenities and the latter is too dangerous.

The mission’s four shelters, which combine for 227 beds, routinely turn away 5 to 6 single people and 10 to 12 families a day. They most commonly see single parents with kids, which are hardest to place in the city.

“There’s nothing for them,” Levine said. “Our referral is going to be downtown Skid Road to the shelters out there… And the dads that show up with kids, nobody really is talking about that.”

The mission’s outreach team, which scours encampments the first Tuesday of each month, say they are noticing an uptick in tents, lean-tos and tarps along freeways, under overpasses and flanking the train tracks that run through West and North Long Beach.

It’s the kind of sequestered places far from a highway, where people have died from overdoses while waiting for paramedics, even after using Narcan multiple times. “They’re out there in the middle of nowhere,” Levine said.

He and some others argue that permissive policies around encampments are worsening the crisis.

The mission runs a strict, one-year recidivism program, that forces participants to wake up early, take classes, work around the facility and do their best to stay clean. Of those who finished — less than 40% — about 87% are financially stable and housed a year later. Levine says that accountability forces many to fix their situation.

On Friday, friends, family and shelter attendees celebrated the most recent graduates — eight people who spent the past year at the facility. They range in age, height, background and story.

One came to the city after 10 years in Memphis. Another drove in with a bag of clothes from Las Vegas. One worked at a mission in Orange, and one came without any surviving family.

One graduate, Akeem Cain, will turn 40 this month. He came to the mission a year ago, homeless, 105 pounds and less than a year into the unexpected death of his mother.

Cain, had already completed the program once in 2017 and thought he had repaired his life. Then the devil came around, he said, “and it tore me apart.”

“I had it — a job, everything,” Cain said. “It didn’t work out right. Years go by. I thought I was going to make it. Lost everything, relationship, family, lost my job. I lost it all.”

With six months or so left until he must move into his own place, Cain is terrified of going back out on his own. He has a job, but it’s not an ideal commute — 90 minutes on the train to downtown LA. He and his girlfriend are estranged, his daughter recently turned 11, and he still is grieving his mother.

“I’m scared, you know, I’m scared,” Cain said. “I don’t know what’s my first step to get out there in the world when I leave this this place. I know they will still be here, and they will have my back, but am I gonna have my own back when I’m out there? That’s the question.”