This article was written by Ruth, who lives on the streets of LA.

🆘 Councilwoman Nithya Raman has targeted me for yet another sweep on Monday, 8/3 🚜

Thanks for reading roofless! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

🚐 If you can help move my belongings into a van on Sunday 8/2 after 5pm, I would really appreciate it! 📦

✍️ Edited by Zachary Ellison, who was displaced by the Eaton Fire. 🔥

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, January 20th–22nd, five-thousand volunteers put on high-visibility vests and set out to count the unsheltered of the Greater Los Angeles area.

To use a pandemic metaphor, the counters were hoping to observe more evidence that the “curve” of homelessness in LA is still “flattening,” like those reductions seen in the 2024 and 2025 counts.

Six months after carrying out the 2026 Greater Los Angeles Count of homelessness, also called the Point-In-Time “PIT” count, the results are in.

The counters did, in fact, observe a reduction in visible shelters, because the number of vehicles and tents went down for the fourth year in a row.

10,761 dwellings were counted.

Although the total number of dwellings (tents + vehicles) is slowly but surely decreasing, the number of makeshift shelters, which can include a sleeping bag, shopping cart, umbrella, tarp, or anything else used to survive outdoors, is on the rise.

Despite the decline in the number of dwellings counted in the City, unsheltered homelessness increased.

In the entire Greater LA “Continuum of Care,” which includes the County and City of LA, but excludes Glendale, Pasadena and Long Beach, 10,483 presumed unsheltered people were counted outside in 2025 and 11,084 were people observed in 2026, a +6% increase.

“Multipliers” move goalposts.

The dwelling “multiplier” has been increased every year since 2023. In 2025, it was raised to 1.75 from 1.71 in 2024 and in 2023, it was 1.56. The 2026 demographic survey determined that more people are living in each dwelling, so the “multiplier” was increased to 1.86 estimated people per dwelling.

The decision to increase the multiplier is allegedly backed up by demographic survey data, which has not been released for 2026. The 2025 demographic survey data and questionnaire are available through Economic Roundtable.

More people living in dwellings have been a trend over at least the last four years…

Year • Multiplier

(estimated number of people per dwelling)

2023 • 1.56

2024 • 1.71

2025 • 1.75

2026 • 1.86

[Slide 22]

In 2019, 2020 and 2022 (2021 was cancelled due to COVID-19), multipliers were calculated for each of the five dwelling types and each of the eight Service Planning Areas, and a separate set of multipliers were calculated to represent members of families living in dwellings, as opposed to individuals. For these years, total of 80 different multipliers were calculated.

In 2023, this nuanced technique was replaced by one universal multiplier (1.56 people per dwelling).

If one must have an unsheltered neighbor, is it not better that they at least have a tent or vehicle of their own?

Un-Sheltering

Tents and vehicle dwellings are targets for constant removals, such as the 9,800 “Milestone Goals.” Also called the “encampment reduction plan,” these sweeps were secretly ordered by City Council in an illegal amendment to the LA Alliance for Human Rights’ settlement with the City.

I wrote about the Alliance and their “Milestone” removal “goals” earlier this month, as I was being removed by City workers myself:

During the week of the 2026 PIT Count, I was personally targeted for an encampment removal in Council District 4. Because of this, I almost certainly did not get counted, nor did my neighbors.

I am again being removed, for the fifth time this year! LA Family Housing is supposed to be helping me get a voucher while the City repeatedly attempts to sabotage with sweeps this monumental personal progress toward housing.

Phoenix Tso at Los Angeles Public Press referred to the modest “uptick” in homelessness as “bad news” and a “regression,” while also drawing a connection to “encampment sweeps.”

The 2025 PIT didn’t detect displacement after #LAFires.

The 2025 PIT was supposed to occur on January 23–25, 2025, but it was delayed to February 18th–20th because of the Palisades and Eaton fires. Therefore, the 2026 PIT was conducted only eleven months after the 2025 PIT.

But how is it possible that after the physical destruction of over 12,000 structures and deaths of two dozen housed people, the 2025 PIT showed a reduction in homelessness?

Is our annual counting ritual useless for detecting displacement due to disasters?

300 fewer people experiencing homelessness (“PEH”) in LA County died in 2024 compared to 2023, a reduction of nearly one death per day.

On paper, numerical reductions look the same whether people exit homelessness to permanent housing or permanent death. County data released in March shows fewer people dying on the streets compared to prior years, for the first time since 2014, which seems worth celebrating.

The latest report by the Department of Public Health - Center for Health Impact Evaluation has the freshest data available concerning deaths of people on the streets of Los Angeles County. From Data to Action • Lives Lost: Mortality Trends and Prevention Opportunities For People Experiencing Homelessness in LA County, 2015-2024 was released by “DPH-CHIE” on March 10th.

Paris Barraza wrote an article for USA Today covering CHIE’s newest findings on the same day the report was released, noting the remarkable 21% reduction in drug overdose deaths. This is likely the intended consequence of tripling naloxone (Narcan) distribution between 2021 and 2023, as noted in the 2025 press release of the report which contained death data for PEH from 2023.

Age

• The number of adults (18-54) experiencing homelessness decreased by 1.1%.

• The number of older adults (55+) experiencing homelessness increased by 13.5%.

Age group • 2025 • 2026

Children (0-17 years) • 6,428 • 5,605

Adults (18-54 years) • 45,718 • 45,225

Older Adults (55+ years) • 15,631 • 17,746

[Slide 31]

LAHSA’s 2026 PIT press release notes a reduction of homeless children and families, but a 13.5% increase in the number of older adults (55+) experiencing homelessness. While an elderly homeless population is not exactly something for our City to be proud of, if it’s indication that the streets are slightly less deadly, then it’s bittersweet news, especially considering that LA’s unsheltered population was struggling to make it to age 50, even before the onset of the pandemic.

Overdoses are declining while vehicular killings of PEH have skyrocketed 248% in a decade.

Until March 2027, when the CHIE report containing last years’ deaths is going to be released, the most recent data about mortality among PEH in LA County is from 2024, when a total of 2,208 deaths were recorded, nearly six per day.

While it is a shocking statistic, and double what it was before the pandemic, it is still a measured improvement compared to the 2,508, or seven per day, from the prior report containing 2023 deaths, released in March of last year.

Who oversees the preparation of PEH death data?

Over 2,000 people who died homeless in LA County from January 1st, 2000 to May 28th, 2007 were recorded in a report by the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, Dying without Dignity: Homeless Deaths in Los Angeles County 2000-2007. The names of the deceased make up the last thirteen pages of the 44-...