Global Courant
The number of homeless people counted in Los Angeles County has risen again, rising 9% since last year in the latest indicator of how deep the crisis is of people sleeping in cars, camps or shelters in California.
Results released Thursday from a federally required census conducted in January showed that 75,518 people were homeless on any given night across the county, compared to 69,144 in 2022. About 46,260 were in the city of Los Angeles, where public frustration has been grown as tents spread further and further. sidewalks and in parks.
The increase consisted entirely of residents living on the streets, as opposed to those in shelters. The entire country’s unsheltered population rose 14% to more than 55,000, while the number of people in shelters fell slightly to just over 20,000.
Since 2015, homelessness has increased by 70% in the province and by 80% in the city.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency for homelessness on her first day in December last December. She has allocated what she called a record $1.3 billion from the city budget to get homeless people into shelter and treatment programs.
Bass, a Democrat, said Thursday that the grim results of the count by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA, highlight the need to treat homelessness as a crisis.
“The challenge for us is huge, but we will continue to work urgently to bring in Angelenos, but also to protect Angelenos from homelessness. If we don’t do both, we will continue this cycle,” she said in a statement. “Lives depend on it.”
Her signature program, called Inside Safe, provides homeless motel rooms and a pathway to permanent housing with services. It has more than 14,000 subscribers to date, Bass said earlier this month.
LA County is the most populous in the country, with a population of about 10 million. According to a 2022 federal census, more than 1 in 5 of all homeless people in the US live in the county.
The problem is most apparent in downtown Los Angeles, where thousands of people live in makeshift barracks that line entire city blocks in the infamous Skid Row neighborhood. Tents regularly appear on the sidewalk and in parks outside City Hall, and camps are increasingly found in suburban areas and under highway overpasses.
Volunteers with LAHSA fanned out across the county in January for the most important part of the effort, the unsheltered street count. The so-called point-in-time count took place over three days, but the results were not released until they were validated by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Among other findings, about 31% of homeless people in the census were black, which is more than four times their total share of the county’s population. Nearly 43% identified as Latino.
About 30% of those not housed reported experiencing substance abuse problems, a slight increase from the previous year.
Congress requires the censuses every two years and uses the information to distribute resources for homeless services.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has budgeted record amounts to combat homelessness that pervades the state’s major cities and many smaller communities.
(TagsToTranslate)Homelessness
