LA homelessness: A hot mess with no relief in sight

When Karen Bass was elected mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, LA’s homeless count was about 42,000.While campaigning for re-election about two months ago, she stated, “I inherited a hot mess. . . . Homelessness was out of control.”Homelessness is still a hot mess and is still out of control. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) announced recently there were more than 45,000 homeless people within the city, is a 7.6% increase since Bass’ 2022 election. If the homeless within LA were their own city, it would be larger than nearly 60% of California cities. Los Angeles didn’t lose the war on homelessness because of funding. Nearly $4.4 billion was budgeted within the city to address homelessness between the 2022-23 and 2025-26 budgets, which works out to about $100,000 per homeless individual at the time Bass took office.So, what went wrong?A key reason why LA has failed to reduce homelessness: unrealistic assumptions about the mental and physical health of the homeless.

 In 2019, LAHSA stated that only 29% of Los Angeles County’s homeless population had either a serious mental illness or a substance-use disorder.LAHSA argued that “the majority of people experiencing homelessness do not report serious mental illness or substance abuse.”However, the majority of the homeless do have drug and alcohol abuse and mental health disorders.

 A Journal of the American Medical Association study reports that 37% regularly use meth, nonprescription opioids, and/or cocaine, and that nearly 20% of the homeless had overdosed. Moreover, about 42% of homeless self-report they drank heavily before becoming homeless, and about 49% self-report they regularly used drugs before homelessness.And these self-reported statistics may significantly understate their true incidence.Another JAMA article surveyed 85 studies and found that rates of mental health disorders among the homeless are roughly 10 to 28 times as high as among the general ...