New reports in Los Angeles County estimate the homeless population to have sky rocketed to 75,518 people.
Homelessness was a hot button issue during this year’s mayoral race between Karen Bass and businessman Rick Caruso. Those early concerns proved to have validity with new reports of escalating homelessness in Los Angeles County. Despite a massive amount of public funding ear marked to help in the eradication of homelessness, recent numbers show the amount of people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles rose by 10 percent, according to numbers released by county officials this week.
The 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count resulted in a 9 percent increase in L.A. County and 10 percent rise specifically in the City of Angels. L.A. County rose to 75,518 people, while the L.A. City counts jumped to 46,260 people.
The tragic results were made public just as first term mayor, Karen Bass and other local officials began dissecting the budget for what is certain to be hundreds of millions of tax payer funds to combat the crisis. Over the several years, L.A. voters have passed initiatives and approved billions of dollars in taxes to establish housing, provide rehabilitation services and nutritional support for the L.A.’s homeless. Recent rises in homeless numbers for both the county and city have been attributed to locals who are without shelter who bed down on the streets on any given night. Those numbers alone climbed by 14 percent over the previous year. These people are generally those who suffer from intermittent shelter needs. L.A.’s chronically homeless, or people who have lived on the streets for a year or more, rose 18 percent.
While L.A. officials applauded relatively similar numbers from the previous year for those who stay in shelters. The results are shocking, and nothing compares to numbers surrounding the runaway population struggling to survive on the L.A. streets. Since 2018, the runaway homeless population has ballooned by 40 percent in both L.A. City and County.
While looking geographically, the spikes centered around the Harbor and Westside areas. Homeless inhabitants jumped by more than 2,000 people, or roughly by 45 percent in those locations.
Janice Hahn of the L.A. Board of Supervisors conceded that the results were disappointing. She went on to discuss how frustrating the numbers were after investing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into resources and support. While L.A. County cities continue to bear the brunt of continued strains on resources, the solutions they have been able to offer are too few. Without county support these cities will not be able to continue to subsidize their homelessness efforts.
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