Our new analysis of three Los Angeles neighborhoods—Hollywood, Venice, and Skid Row—shows that rough sleeping has risen to new heights. Rough sleeping refers to unhoused people living without the protection of a vehicle, tent, or makeshift dwelling.
If left unaddressed, this increase in the most precarious form of homelessness sets back recent progress in Los Angeles’s efforts to combat this crisis.
According to the latest count, over 45,000 people are homeless in the City of Los Angeles. As homelessness has climbed to the top of voters’ concerns, city and county leaders have directed unprecedented resources at reducing this number. Yet progress has been elusive: Since the multi-billion-dollar Prop HHH and Measure H initiatives were passed in 2016 and 2017, homelessness in LA has grown by an average of 8 percent per year.
For the roughly 29,000 unhoused people who live unsheltered in tents, vehicles, or rough sleeping exposed on the street, however, the trend may be changing. Mayor Bass’s Inside Safe initiative began providing hotel placements for members of this population in specific encampments in late 2022. Since then, unsheltered homelessness has fallen by 10 percent (PDF).