Over three days in January, 5,500 volunteers spread out across Los Angeles County to do the impossible: count the homeless. Results of the survey, released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, estimated a homeless population of 44,359, an increase of 12% since the last survey in 2013.
Los Angeles County needs affordable rental units to meet the housing needs of homeless people and the Angeleno residents who live in poverty.
One in every 267 Angelenos is living on sidewalks, under freeways, along street medians, and in hospital emergency rooms. Many of them have survived this way for years.
The homeless population in Los Angeles County jumped 5.7 percent last year, with a sharp increase in tents and homeless encampments offering daily evidence of the problem sweeping this region, county officials said Wednesday. The findings are based on a three-night, block-by-block census of homeless people living on the street. The overall homeless population increased from 44,359 in January 2015 to 46,874 in the count in January 2016 in all of Los Angeles County. There was a 20 percent increase in tents, encampments and vehicles there, not counting the cities of Glendale, Long Beach and Pasadena.
For the second year in a row, Los Angeles reported the largest number of chronically homeless people in the nation.