The number of homeless people across L.A. County declined 4% in 2025, marking the second consecutive drop after years of steady increases, with a 10% decrease of people living in the streets, according to the annual count released Monday.
The decline, based on a snapshot taken in February, follows billions in taxpayer funds spent to solve homelessness in the county, and comes with increasing scrutiny of how the money is being spent.
Officials with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which conducts the count, said the declines show the investment is working, particularly in reducing the population of unsheltered homeless individuals — that is people living on the streets rather than in temporary housing.
In the past two years, the city and county have increasingly focused on clearing encampments and providing an offer of a shelter bed or a room in a hotel or motel.
“Reducing homelessness is now a trend in LA City and county,” said Paul Rubenstein, LAHSA’s deputy chief external relations officer. “Our leaders came together to bring people inside and their efforts are paying off.”
The 2025 numbers represent the first time, since its inception in 2005, that the point in time homelessness count has shown declines in overall homelessness two years in a row, Mayor Karen Bass said.
“Homelessness has gone down two years in a row because we chose to act with urgency and reject the broken status quo of leaving people on the street until housing was built,” she said. “These aren’t just data points — they represent thousands of human beings who are now inside, and neighborhoods that are beginning to heal.”
How strong a trend depends on how you look at it. Last year, overall homelessness declined slightly in both the city and county, but the drops were too small to be statistically significant.
Unsheltered homeless, however, did meaningfully decline in 2024.
This year, the drops in both categories were outside the margin of error.
In all, there were an estimated 72,308 people living in shelters or on the streets in the county in February, a 4% reduction from the 2024 count. In the city of L.A., homelessness fell 3.4% to 43,699.
The unsheltered population saw larger declines.
In February, there were an estimated 47,413 people living on the streets in the county and 26,972 in the city, annual declines of 9.5% and 7.9%, respectfully.
Over the last two years, the unsheltered population in the county has dropped 14%, and 17.5% in the city.
Rubenstein said those numbers have fallen in large part because of encampment resolution efforts.
Those include Mayor Bass’ Inside Safe initiative and the county’s Pathway Home, both which focus on quickly moving people off the streets and into interim — and sometimes permanent — housing.
Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who chairs the housing and homelessness committee, said she was “proud” to see the significant decrease in unsheltered homelessness in the city.
“[When you’re unsheltered], you’re the victim of assault, crime, sexual assault. Women are extraordinarily unsafe,” she said. “Unsheltered homelessness is what housed people see. That’s what feels challenging for the city.”
As more people move into shelter beds, hotels and motels on what’s supposed to be a temporary basis, the number of people who are sheltered, but without a permanent home grew.
In 2025, the sheltered homeless population was up 8.5% in the county and 4.7% in the city, according to the count.
Historically, about 25% of the homeless population is sheltered, but that number rose to about 38% in the city and 34% in the county in February.
LAHSA, which overseas the region’s homeless service system, said it is making progress on getting people into permanent housing.
Last year, agency data showed 11,146 people moved from interim housing into a permanent home, 23.5% more than in 2023.
The annual homeless count was conducted from February 18 to Feb. 20.
Volunteers spread out across the county and counted the number of people they see sleeping out in the open. They also tallied the number of tents, makeshift shelters and vehicles where people are likely living.
Researchers at USC then use a separate demographic survey to estimate how many people, on average, are living in each of those dwellings.
The numbers released Monday aren’t the only evidence homelessness has declined, at least in some places.
Earlier this month, researchers at RAND released findings of a more intensive survey that found unsheltered homelessness declined in Hollywood and Venice last year, while rising in Skid Row, contributing to a 15% drop when the three neighborhoods were combined.
The two reports come at a critical time for Los Angeles’ homeless service delivery system, which for decades has been overseen by LAHSA.
In the last year, two audits found LAHSA lacked sufficient oversight of its contracts and programs, leaving them vulnerable to waste and fraud.
Following those reports, the County Board of Supervisors voted in April to move hundreds of millions of county dollars out of LAHSA and put it into a new agency that will launch next year.
L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said the decrease in overall homelessness in the county is “progress,” but that the decline is not fast enough.
“That’s why Los Angeles County is launching a new, dedicated department — one that is coordinated, accountable, and designed to meet the urgency of this moment,” she said. “It will streamline services, break through bureaucracy, and deliver results across all 88 cities and unincorporated communities.”
In a presentation to reporters last week, LAHSA said it has worked to improve efficiency in the last two years, as well as increase coordination with local officials, which it said helped contribute to lower levels of homelessness.
Los Angeles City Councilman Bob Blumenfield, however, said he takes “any data LAHSA makes public with a grain of salt” and said given budget problems across all levels of government “we need to keep exploring creative ideas and build different types of housing because the ratio of funds spent to progress is not sustainable.”
Indeed, moving people off the streets could soon get tougher.
The Trump Administration wants to cut funding for the federal rental subsidy known as Section 8. While the state and county have already cut some funding for homeless services amid budget constraints, including some funds LAHSA has used to move people out of shelters and into apartments.
Rubenstein said that reduction in particular means it will be hard to “maintain this pace” of moving people into permanent housing and why its so important to “commit to the creation of new permanent housing” locally through entities like the new L.A. County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency.
Times reporter Doug Smith contributed to this report.
