An accounting glitch caused nearly half of L.A.'s increase in the homeless count
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Set us as preferred Deep in the data sheets published last month with the 2026 homeless count was a surprising statistic about change in Skid Row.According to the records, the downtown Los Angeles district’s homeless population swelled last year by more than 800 people, an increase of 24%.Those numbers accounted for more than half of the city’s troubling 3.4% increase, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which conducts the count.The reality was much less alarming.
Most of that growth was attributed to 614 more people occupying shelter beds than the year before.Those beds existed.
But they weren’t new.In fact, they had been occupied for decades.For reasons loosely tied to relations between church and state, they’ve been included some years in the annual count but left out in other years, one of many erratic variables that make precise and reliable quantification of the city’s homelesness problem all but impossible.Because of the many variables, it’s impossible to say exactly how the city’s trend line would have changed if the beds were counted correctly each year.A rough calculation suggests that last year’s cityide overall homelessness number would have still have been an increase, but by a more modest rate of just under 1.9%, not 3.4%.The effect would have been the opposite in prior years, rendering two successive decreases in citywide homelessness marginally less impressive.
A 5.5% decrease over two years would be shaved to 4.1%.L.A.Mayor Karen Bass, whose record on homelessness is a key issue in her bid for reelection, said LAHSA officials did not tell her office about the discrepancies before the numbers were released.
“Absolutely not,” she said when asked Monday.She added that she has never viewed the homeless count as a precise tool for assessing the crisis.“This is why I would very much like to have a count done by the city, where we can control how it is do...