On December 1, 2023, the Office of the Los Angeles City Administrative Officer released its 2022-2023 Shelter Crisis Declaration status report to the Los Angeles City Council outlining the progress the city has made in addressing the homeless crisis in L.A. 

In 2022, Mayor Karen Bass declared a local emergency to address Los Angeles’s housing and homelessness crisis. Her executive directives under the emergency declaration allowed for an expedited processing of shelters and 100 percent affordable housing projects in Los Angeles. An additional executive directive issued February 10, 2023, allows for the emergency use of city-owned property for temporary and permanent supportive housing.

The mayor is allowed to declare a local emergency when L.A.’s housing supply falls 40 percent below the city’s state-mandated housing production goals, when the city has twice as many unhoused people as interim shelter beds, or when homelessness increases by 20 percent in a single year.

Currently, there are an estimated 75,518 homeless people in L.A. County, with 46,260 of those people being in the city of Los Angeles, according to the 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count by the L.A. Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA.) The number of homeless individuals increased by 6,374 since last year when the total was 69,144. 

At the end of 2022, Bass then launched Inside Safe and has moved almost 22,000 people inside since launching the program.

Just 255 people, or 13 percent of the people who participated in Inside Safe, were in permanent housing during the time frame examined by LAHSA.

“Since the first day when I declared a state of emergency, we have confronted the homelessness crisis with absolute urgency,” said Mayor Bass in a press release in December. “We have brought thousands inside and will continue to improve our operations to reduce the number of people who have fallen back into homelessness and better protect those who are housed but potentially on the verge.”   

There are 16,181 estimated permanent supportive housing (PSH) beds in the city. This number includes beds in city-funded PSH housing developments, as well as tenant-based units, scattered site PSH units, and units that do not participate in the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS).

This represents an increase from the 16,005 units reported in FY 2022-23. Of these, 11,907 are in facilities that participate in HMIS and report having served 20,287 people in FY 2022-23.

There were 4,627 people placed into all types of permanent housing in 2022-23, including those placed from shelters and those who did not access shelters before placement. This number represents a decrease of 191 from the 4,818 total placements in 2021-22.

According to LAHSA, this decrease from prior year numbers might be attributed to the following: 

• Major increases in the rental cost for market-rate units
• Trends toward stricter background checks from private market landlords that might screen out participants with criminal backgrounds or prior evictions 
• Lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on PSH project construction timelines
• Fewer available units in the rental market, which is in part believed to be related to L.A.’s eviction moratorium extension. 

The report states that 3,292 persons moved from shelter into any type of permanent housing including both PSH and non-PSH units, such as rapid rehousing, subsidized affordable housing, and Section 8 vouchers. This number is inclusive of the 276 residents who have moved from shelters that participate in HMIS into PSH as reported above. 

On June 14, 2022, the city reached an agreement with the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights to create shelter or housing to accommodate 60 percent of homeless people experiencing homelessness in the city. 

Therefore, the city of Los Angeles is required to create 12,915 new beds including interim housing beds, time-limited subsidies, as well as permanent supportive housing units.

According to the report, 2,347 beds or units were open and 8,455 beds or units were in progress under the Alliance Settlement Agreement.

In 2016, voters approved Proposition HHH, a $1.2 billion bond measure designed to create 10,000 housing units in ten years. 

51 projects with 3,053 units, 2,469 of which were PSH units, had received a temporary certificate of occupancy or certificate of occupancy. In addition, an additional 79 projects with 5,543 units, 4,687 of which were PSH units, were in the pipeline.

• The city of Los Angeles has allocated $703 million to bridge housing and homeless roadmap programs. The funding for these programs includes:
• $59 million from the City’s State of California Homeless Emergency Aid Program (HEAP) grant allocation for capital and operating costs
• $78 million from the City’s State of California Homeless Housing and Assistance Program (HHAP) grant allocation for capital and operating costs
• $88.7 million in City General Fund dollars allocated for capital and operating costs
• $171 million from the City’s Federal Coronavirus Relief Fund allocation for capital costs 
• $182 million from the City’s Federal Emergency Shelter Grant (ESG) – COVID for capital and operating costs; o $5 million from the City’s Federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) – COVID for capital costs $238 million from the Homelessness Efforts – County Funding Agreement Fund for operating costs

In 2020, the city of L.A. reached an agreement with L.A. County to develop an additional 6,700 homeless interventions to address the COVID-19 emergency within 18 months. This agreement established the following milestones: 

• 700 beds in existing agreements with the County within 10 months 
• 5,300 new beds within 10 months 
• 700 new beds within 18 months 
• Six thousand of these beds must be new beds, which are not included in any existing agreements between the City and the County 

As of June 30, 2023, 6,588 new beds were open and occupiable, including 1,263 rapid rehousing/shared housing interventions implemented by LAHSA.

Photo Obtained by Screen capture from Google Maps