Most unhoused Angelenos say LA wildfires endangered their lives, study finds

In the wake of the Palisades and Eaton fires last year, much has been reported about the thousands of Angelenos who lost their homes and the dozens who lost their lives.

A new study by UCLA and USC researchers looks at how the fires affected Los Angeles County's unhoused population — and finds that a majority of those surveyed said the disaster put their lives in danger.

The study, published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, found that of the 374 people who participated, 56% reported their lives had been in danger and 21% said they had been injured.

About 76% of all the respondents said their routines had been disrupted by the fires, and 46% said their living areas were damaged.

"People are living in these extraordinarily awful conditions where high winds can cause damage to where they live, can displace them and can cause injury,” said Ben Henwood, a professor at USC’s School of Social Work and an author of the new study. “And that's by definition because they are vulnerable living out on the streets.”

The study analyzed data from a monthly survey of unhoused Angelenos that has been going on since 2021, known as PATHS. The participants completed surveys in both December 2024 and January 2025, and responded to specific questions about natural disasters and their housing situations.

Unsheltered respondents described tents and vehicles damaged by falling debris and belongings swept away by high winds, according to the study. They also described disruptions to services, because of clinics and other service sites closing or burning down during the fires.

The 15% of participants who said they lived within wildfire evacuation zones reported that they experienced more frequent evacuations, more prolonged exposure to smoke and more difficulty finding shelter.

The study’s authors say L.A. County and other local governments should recognize the risks and incorporate unhoused Angelenos into climate disaster planning.

Unsheltered risks

Last year’s wildfires in L.A. County killed 29 people, destroyed more than 10,000 homes and displaced hundreds of thousands of residents. The challenges the urban wildfires posed for L.A. County’s estimated 74,000 unhoused residents have not yet been well-documented or studied.

“Most of what we know about homelessness comes from systems-gathered data,” Henwood said. “With people who aren't connected to systems, it’s really hard to know how services or policies are affecting them. And in this case, how natural disasters might be affecting them.”

People who were “unsheltered” — living outside in tents or vehicles — were more likely to be injured, displaced or lose belongings in the wildfire than people living indoors in shelters or publicly-funded hotel rooms, the study found.

L.A. County is home to the nation’s largest unsheltered population, with more than 52,000 people living outside on any given night, according to official estimates.

Of those living in tents or similar makeshift shelters, more than 75% said they experienced damage to their living spaces during the wildfires and preceding windstorm.

"This was as much a wind event as a fire event,” Randall Kuhn, a UCLA public health professor and a study author, told LAist. “A lot of people had lost everything before the fires even sparked. You're living in a wind tunnel and suddenly 90-mile-an-hour winds come through.”

Related studies

Last month, Kuhn, Henwood and colleagues published another study focused on the medical concerns of unsheltered Angelenos, which found that about 40% of that population in L.A. County had mental health conditions and about 33% had substance use disorders.

They published another on the health impacts of police-led encampment sweeps on unhoused people, which found that a third of people living outside face sweeps at least monthly, and that routine sweeps are associated with negative physical and mental health outcomes.

This month, other UCLA researchers published a national study finding that each home lost to climate disaster per 10,000 people was associated with a 1% increase in homelessness.

Researchers say homelessness in L.A. County is in an emergency of disastrous proportions that's in need of its own solutions. And as long as the county has a large population living outside, they’ll be vulnerable.

"If we're gonna have people out on the streets, how do they access bathrooms, how do they access water, how are they gonna be protected when natural disasters happen?” Henwood said. “Those are the sorts of conversations that seem to me to be needed and more realistic.”

The authors recommend better access to emergency shelters near evacuation zones, more provision of protective equipment like goggles and masks and using mutual aid networks to fill in gaps in public services.

The studies were funded by the universities, the National Institutes of Health, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the Homeless Policy Research Institute and LA Care.