Six homeless people will die today in LA County, and over 2,000 will die by the end of the year.
Among our homeless population in 2024, drug overdoses alone killed 884 people. One hundred five were murdered. Eighty died by suicide.
Meanwhile, the Fire Department responded to nearly 17,000 fires linked to homeless encampments, roughly a third of all fires in LA over the past six years.
And three weeks ago, the Department of Public Health announced an outbreak of the flea-borne disease typhus, which has previously been linked to encampment conditions.
If 2,200 members of any other identifiable population were dying annually in LA County at four times the general mortality rate, we would call it what it is: a public health emergency.
Los Angeles has spent billions on homelessness and produced a system that cannot account for its own spending, let alone its results. In March 2025, an independent audit commissioned by a federal judge reviewed $2.4 billion in city homeless spending and found it virtually impossible to trace where the money went.
Proposition HHH, the $1.2 billion bond measure voters approved in 2016 to build 10,000 housing units, has completed fewer than half that number at over $700,000 per unit.
The spending failures reflect a deeper strategic one.
For years, LA has organized its entire homelessness response around Housing First — the principle that permanent housing must come before anything else. But permanent supportive housing takes years to build, can cost over $1 million per unit, and has plainly failed to keep pace with the crisis.
Even worse, Housing First does not require recovery from addiction as a condition of housing — ensuring that for thousands of people, the underlying cause of their homelessness is never addressed.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
