LOS ANGELES – On Friday afternoon, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority confirmed what anyone with eyes could have told you-homelessness, which for more than a decade has been the greatest physical and moral crisis facing the region, is not getting better.
In fact, the numbers are marginally worse than they were a year ago. The 2026 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count results show that the tally of unhoused people during three nights in January rose 1.2% over the previous year, to 73,040 across the county, or about the capacity of SoFi Stadium. The climb in the city of Los Angeles was 3.4%, to 45,194. A particular lowlight was that in the city, the number of unsheltered individuals rose 7.9%, to 29,115.
While this is not good news, neither is it the sky-is-falling catastrophe that some headlines suggest, as the overall upticks are incremental. Still, frustration runs high, as it should-most Angelenos have seen little visible improvement over the past five years. Everyone wants better results…