Homelessness in Los Angeles
by Ben Kirschbaum
Over the past few years, homelessness in Los Angeles has skyrocketed. During the COVID-19 pandemic, 14 million Americans became unemployed, which led to a rise in homelessness. Since 2019, the amount of homeless people in the United States has risen by 31%, from 57,351 to 75,312. The increase in the homeless population has also led to negative perceptions of neighborhoods with homeless encampments, which has led to some local businesses getting less customers and being forced to close. These factors have led to Los Angeles city officials looking for solutions to homelessness, from making housing more affordable to building homeless shelters and rehab centers around the city.
The high cost of housing in L.A. is a major contributor to homelessness. To address this, a crucial goal is to reduce the cost of purchasing and renting houses and apartments. Policies such as inclusionary zoning, which mandates that new housing developments contain a certain percentage of affordable units, help increase the availability of lower-cost housing. Additionally, the city government has tried to expand initiatives such as rent control, which limits how much landlords can increase rent. Expanding rent control is a lot easier than reducing the price of housing, but it has other issues associated with it. For instance, rent control can cause landlords to stop maintaining or improving their properties, as their income from the property is capped. This can lead to a reduction in the overall rental supply, as property owners may convert their rental units to other uses, such as short-term rentals through companies like AirBnB and Vrbo, or withdraw them from the market altogether. This reduction in supply can exacerbate the housing crisis, as fewer rental units become available for those in need, raising the cost for everyone and putting those who can’t afford even the lowest rent out on the street.
According to the County of Los Angeles Homeless Initiative, one of the primary drivers of homelessness is the severe lack of affordable housing. According to the 2022 LA County Annual Affordable Housing Outcomes Report by the nonprofit California Housing Partnership, the County has a shortfall of 499,430 affordable homes.
Even though the shortage of affordable homes remains large, this shortfall is 82,393 less than in 2014. New mixed-use projects like the below will go a long way to helping solve our affordable housing crisis, which in turn will help alleviate our homelessness crisis.
An architect’s depiction of a mixed-use development to be built in South L.A.: a Costco with 800 housing units built above (source: Thrive Living)
Another solution for unhoused people is to build homeless shelters across Los Angeles. Unlike the other ideas mentioned, this resolution could both prevent homelessness from occurring and help people who are already living on the streets. Already, our mayor has set a goal for 25,000 new homeless housing units to be built by the year 2025. But this solution has a much bigger problem than the other two solutions: the public's resistance to having homeless shelters in their own neighborhood. Many residents express concerns about property values, safety, and the impact on their neighborhoods. This "Not In My Backyard" (NIMBY) attitude makes it difficult to find locations where shelters can be built without facing significant opposition, especially since Los Angeles has laws in place that makes it illegal to build any homeless shelter near a freeway. Additionally, the Ninth Circuit Court — the most powerful federal appeals court in the western United States — passed a law in 2023 banning the moving of homeless encampments unless there are available spots at shelters within a walkable distance. This has incentivized the construction of homeless shelters close to where encampments are, which are often also near residential neighborhoods.
Despite these challenges, there is still hope for solving the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Since Mayor Karen Bass took office in 2022, the city has definitely made progress, with significantly fewer people living on the streets than in previous years. Initiatives such as increasing the availability of affordable housing are receiving more support, which has helped get a lot of people off the streets. Additionally, the effects of COVID-19 are starting to lessen, re-opening job opportunities that haven’t existed since COVID first started. If the city of Los Angeles continues these efforts, we will continue to reduce the number of unhoused people and possibly in the future, end homelessness altogether.