Los Angeles' yearslong effort to shrink its homeless population has hit a speed bump at a politically fraught moment for Mayor Karen Bass. The New York Times reports that a new point-in-time count, to be released on Friday, shows homelessness in the city rose 3.4% over the past year to 45,194 people, according to two people briefed on the data. The number of people living outdoors in tents, encampments, or vehicles climbed 7.9%. It's the first full-year increase on Bass' watch, after two consecutive declines she'd touted as proof her strategy was working. Countywide, homelessness ticked up 1.2% between 2025 and 2026 across Los Angeles and more than 80 surrounding cities.
Bass, locked in a reelection fight with City Council member Nithya Raman, argued in a Thursday statement that federal cuts to safety-net programs, state reductions, and friction with county officials over mental health funding undercut progress. She maintained that homelessness in the city is still down double digits since 2023, pointing to tens of thousands moved into interim housing and 6,000 people brought indoors through her Inside Safe program to remove encampments.
"This crisis was ignored by city leaders for decades; it's only now that we've seen a historic decline," Bass said in a statement, per the Los Angeles Times. "I will never stop fighting until we end street homelessness, because no Angeleno should be sleeping on the street." The numbers, first reported by FOX 11, land as Bass already faces criticism over wildfire fallout and a toxic warehouse blaze in Boyle Heights.
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