This story is a collaboration between the LAist and The LA Local. Agya K. Aning and Alain Stephens are freelance reporters. LAist's Jared Bennett edited.

The danger gun violence presents to Los Angeles’ unhoused community has been growing for years.

An analysis of Los Angeles Police Department data by LAist and The LA Local found that at least 278 unhoused people have been shot and killed in the city since 2015. Additional analysis of records from the L.A. County Medical Examiner found at least two dozen additional unhoused shooting victims in 2024 and 2025 that were not included in the LAPD data.

Law enforcement officials acknowledge violent deaths among L.A.’s unhoused people have remained persistently high, even as homicides fell over the last decade across the general population.

Data from LAPD show fatal shootings involving unhoused victims are clustered around encampments in Skid Row. The murder rate in census tracks that make up Skid Row was more than 17 times higher in 2024 than the city as a whole.

One obvious question: Would clearing encampments reduce this kind of violence?

It turns out, the answer is far from clear.

Why clearing encampments might increase danger

Encampments are the most visible manifestation of homelessness throughout Los Angeles and many other American cities.

Numerous unhoused Angelenos told LAist and The LA Local that people band together in them for a sense of safety and protection, which researchers have found as well.

But allowing encampments to remain comes at the expense of the greater public, according to Tom Wolf, a formerly unhoused recovery advocate from San Francisco.

“You can’t have that in our downtown cores, because it completely destabilizes the entire city, because it drives away business,” Wolf said. “And when you drive away business, you lose money, and then pretty soon you can't afford all those services you need for the homeless that you’re trying to help.”

Furor over encampments has become so intense that Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened last year to pull state funding from counties that fail to show “demonstrable results” in clearing them. His announcement came on the heels of the 2024 Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which legalized arresting people for camping outside, even when shelter isn’t available.

Advocates for the unhoused argue this approach is shortsighted.

“What criminalization does is it moves people into the shadows, it isolates people, and therefore they become more susceptible to violence,” said Donald Whitehead Jr., the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

The current status of clearing encampments in L.A.

One of L.A.’s primary programs for getting unsheltered people off the streets is Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe. The program aims to reduce encampments by offering hotel rooms to those living in them until more permanent housing becomes available. People living in encampments get a notice of three to four weeks before the location is cleared out, according to an email from the Mayor’s Office.

Since its launch in December 2022, Inside Safe has served nearly 6,000 people. Of those, almost 3,100 people remain in housing or interim housing, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Nearly 2,900 others have returned to the streets — about 48% of all program participants. As of mid-April, it has cost Angelenos more than $391 million.

The Mayor’s Office said it collaborates with local leaders to identify which encampments to clear. Gisselle Espinoza, an LAPD commander and coordinator on homeless outreach, echoed this statement. She said police officers accompany outreach and cleanup workers in a supportive role, but only if requested.

“We work with the council district for that area,” Espinoza said, “and we let them know what the issues are, and together we come up with a plan to see how we can better approach that situation and go into those areas and offer services.”

City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who represents District 1, which includes MacArthur Park, told LAist and The LA Local that this isn’t always the case.

“We saw videos online of encampments being swept by LAPD that we had not participated in,” Hernandez said, “and we're just really shocked to see because the next day we were going to do an operation to house people there.”

Does clearing encampments make people safer?

Where unhoused people choose to live involves considerations similar to those of anyone else, said Jeremy Rosenprinz, a member of the volunteer-led L.A. outreach group Ktown For All. Those include proximity to family, friends and work. Encampments also provide a centralized location to receive aid and services from outreach workers.

“When the police come in, they sever all of those bonds,” he said.

Through his work with Ktown For All, Rosenprinz became friends with an unhoused man named Vernon Henry. He lived in an encampment just a block away from Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown, where Ktown For All meets. In 2023, Henry was shot and killed by a stranger who was harassing a neighbor, Rosenprinz said.

Henry, 32, left behind a wife.

“Right after this community had gone through this horrible tragedy, the city's solution was to clear the entire encampment. They didn't house anybody,” Rosenprinz said. “And all these people were scattered, and some of them I never saw again.”

Rosenprinz said that cleanup was done through CARE/CARE+. The program, run by the city’s Sanitation and Environment Department, is intended to clear encampments and connect unhoused residents to services. A 2026 study from UCLA’s Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy found it “mainly [serves] to displace those people rather than to offer them services.”

L.A. Sanitation and Environment did not return requests for comment.

Wolf, the recovery advocate, said letting encampments remain standing comes with its own dangers, particularly over time.

“The longer that an encampment exists in the same place, the worse it gets,” he said. “More trash, more violence, more drugs, more sexual assaults, more overdose deaths.”

Jeff Wenninger is a former LAPD lieutenant and the founder and CEO of Law Enforcement Consultants, which provides expert witness testimonies and security consulting. He said that his experience in law enforcement makes him doubtful that encampments increase safety.

“The vast majority of the crime that occurs there is the result of disputes,” he said. “So, the fewer people that you have congregated in a community, so to speak, the less likelihood you have of disagreements and the arguments that then escalate to these violent crimes.”

Still, Wenninger sees breaking up encampments as an ineffective means of addressing homelessness. “Because you haven't resolved it. You're just dispersing people,” he said. “You're not addressing the root cause of the homelessness, the reason these encampments exist.”

What does make a difference?

Comparing the unhoused populations of New York City and Los Angeles underscores one thing that appears to make a big difference: getting people sheltered, even if it’s not permanent housing.

While New York’s total unhoused population is roughly equal to the total across L.A. County, shooting deaths of unhoused people are far lower in New York. That’s because New York’s right-to-shelter law means that the number of New Yorkers who are “unsheltered” — living in tents or cars instead of shelters — is much smaller than in L.A. Over the past decade, New York City’s unsheltered population has stayed between about 2,400 and 4,500. L.A.’s is estimated at about 27,000, in the most recent homeless count. With fewer people at risk on the streets, seven unhoused people were shot to death in homicides in New York City between July 2023 and July 2024. In the city of L.A. alone, that number was 30.

Additional reporting by LAist watchdog correspondent Jordan Rynning.