LA regional homeless count shows a spike in homelessness. How will that affect LA's race for mayor?

In October 2023, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appointed herself to the board of the regional Homeless Services Authority, also known as LAHSA.

No other mayor had done that. It was a bold move designed to signal she wasn’t going to stand by and allow others to make important decisions on the homelessness crisis without her.

Two years later, Bass touted a 17.5% drop in the number of people living on the streets in the city.

But that downward trend did not continue. The latest LAHSA homeless count numbers showed overall homelessness — referring to people without a fixed nighttime residence — crept back up 3.4% last year. Street homelessness — referring to people living in tents, cars and outdoors — jumped 7.9%.

More than 45,000 unhoused people live in the city of L.A., about 36% of whom live in shelters, according to LAHSA.

Homelessness remains a key issue for L.A. voters, and the latest homeless count numbers were a blow to the incumbent mayor who put homelessness at the top of her agenda.

They could threaten her reelection bid in November.

“It really undercuts her core reelection pitch,” said Sara Sadhwani, associate professor of politics at Pomona College. “This increase is a major step back for Bass.”

The mayor blamed cuts in funding for the increase.

Mayor Karen Bass at a LAHSA meeting on Feb. 28, 2025.

(

Nick Gerda

/

LAist

)

“Last year our efforts ultimately couldn’t keep up with policies and funding cuts at the federal and state levels that pushed more people onto the streets,” Bass said in a statement last month following the release of the count results.

Bass’ challenger in the mayoral election, L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, has pointed out that the funding cuts occurred after the homeless count, which took place in January.

The numbers from the count looked good for Raman, whose council district saw a drop in street homelessness.

But Bass has said that decrease is due, at least in part, to her signature Inside Safe program, which targets encampments for removal while offering people living there temporary shelter and services.

Effects of Inside Safe

Raman, who was elected to the council in 2020, said there’s been a lack of oversight of Inside Safe. She said people brought in off city streets have lingered too long in temporary shelters, like motels, without moving on to permanent housing and haven’t been given the social services they needed to get back on their feet.

“The city has spent millions of dollars moving encampments from one block to the next without actually bringing people indoors, and a LAHSA analysis found that 81% of those sites were repopulated,” Raman said at a news conference last month.

Nithya Raman, an L.A. City Councilmember at a mayoral campaign event in May 2026.

(

Aaron Schrank

/

LAist

)

Raman, who chairs the City Council’s housing and homelessness committee, hyped a 49% drop in unsheltered homelessness in her council district during the homeless count period from January 2025 to January 2026. Her district stretches from Silver Lake over the Hollywood Hills to Sherman Oaks.

However, hers had a smaller number of unhoused people to begin with compared with other districts.

“We have one of the most aggressive interventionist approaches across the entire city,” she said. “My office pioneered having a homelessness team embedded in the council office when I first started.”

She said her staff knows many of the people experiencing homelessness in the district by name. And she said staffers are tracking homeless encampments on maps.

Raman contends the mayor’s Inside Safe program has fallen short. But Bass stresses that Raman’s district has benefitted from the program.

“It is hard to believe both statements could be true,” said Bass campaign strategist Julie Chavez Rodriguez. “Inside Safe is ineffective and yet it drove down homelessness in council district four — Councilwoman Raman’s district.”

Credit vs. criticism on homelessness

A UC Berkeley/L.A. Times poll found 66% of voters see moving homeless residents indoors as “very important.”

“It's one of the big issues, if not the top issue,” Grose said. “I think it's part of a broader quality-of-life discussion.”

Zev Yaroslavsky, who directs the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said Bass should get credit for taking on the issue.

“She is the first mayor in my lifetime who actually said from day one that this is an issue she’s going to take on. She put it on her shoulders,” said Yaroslavsky, a former county supervisor and City Council member for four decades.

But Yaroslavsky said Bass overpromised on the number of people who could get housed. During her 2022 campaign for mayor, Bass said she would move 17,000 people into shelters during her first year in office.

According to the Mayor’s Office, Inside Safe has moved more than 6,000 people into motels and other types of interim housing so far.

That’s progress Bass probably isn't getting credit for, said Yaroslavsky.

“When you’re not popular, you have a harder time getting people to believe that you’re making progress,” he said.

In June, the federal government suspended LAHSA from future federal funding opportunities, threatening more than $240 million in annual grants. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development cited a pattern of financial mismanagement, unverified housing sites and conflict-of-interest violations at LAHSA as reasons for the suspension.

Los Angeles County in February slashed nearly $200 million from homelessness programs, driven by lower-than-expected sales tax revenues and expiring pandemic-era relief funds.

USC political science Professor Christian Grose said it's not surprising that the mayor pointed to those federal and state funding cuts for the overall increase in homelessness.

“It's normal for a mayor who is facing a tough reelection fight to blame other levels of government,” he said. “It's also a smart political move to blame the Trump administration for a reduction in funding.”

Raman said the mayor should take more responsibility.

“The mayor’s job is not to explain why someone else is responsible," she said. "The mayor’s job is to take charge of the system and deliver results.”

Raman said, if elected, she would reduce street homelessness by 50% before the 2028 Olympics and eliminate it entirely by the end of her first four years in office.

Yaroslavsky said that’s unrealistic, given the enormity and complexity of the challenge.

Rodriguez told LAist the mayor remains committed to reducing homelessness.

“She remains focused on addressing this critical issue,” Rodriguez said. “Before she came into office, homelessness was on the rise and she’s going to continue to focus on bringing it down.”