Courtesy photo
Wave Wire Services
LOS ANGELES — The third and final day of the 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count takes place Feb. 20 with volunteers spanning the Antelope Valley, West Los Angeles, South Los Angeles and the South Bay/Harbor areas.
The 2025 count by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority was delayed almost a month by the January fires.
The annual count provides a point-in-time snapshot of homelessness throughout the L.A. Continuum of Care — which covers most of the region except the cities of Long Beach, Pasadena and Glendale. This year’s count began Feb. 18 in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys, and the Metro Los Angeles area.
The following night volunteers took to the streets to count encampments, RVs and other makeshift homes across the San Gabriel Valley and East Los Angeles.
The joint county-city agency expects to release data from the count in the late spring or early summer.
The data represented an overall decrease in the homeless population for the first time after five years of steady rises.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released a report in December that found homelessness increased in the nation by 18% in 2024, but highlighted that L.A. was among a handful of cities that bucked that national trend.
In its report, the federal department highlighted the Maui fire, among other natural disasters, which led to an increase in homelessness — a concern Los Angeles County officials share following the devastating January wildfires that destroyed Pacific Palisades and Altadena communities. Officials are crafting measures aimed at helping people in danger of falling into homelessness due to the fires.
Meanwhile, two separate but similar proposals were introduced at the county and city level, with elected officials agreeing to explore creating departments to focus on homeless services.
The move came after a county Auditor-Controller Department report cited several concerns about the homeless services authority’s management of homeless funding, such as failing to recoup cash advances provided to subcontractors, failing to establish repayment schedules for subcontractors, lack of adequate records for tracking cash advances awarded to other agencies and failure to adequately monitor contracts with recipient agencies and document whether subcontractors who received funds actually met the terms of their contracts.
Kellum previously noted that several of the issues were a result of fiscal practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Authority officials highlighted several measures intended to correct these issues.
Los Angeles City Council members criticized the agency for its “lack of transparency” regarding data and operations.
