Los Angeles’ s incompetent leadership turned the city into a ticking time bomb for massive fire damage.
For the 2024-2025 fiscal year, the Los Angeles Fire Department had a budget of around $837 million. Los Angeles spent more money on homelessness — around $961 million. LAFD is also forced to spend its own resources and money from its own budget to deal with homelessness.
According to a memo from interim LAFD Chief Ronnie Villanueva, a third of the fires the department has responded to in the last six years were homeless fires. In the last 10 years, rubbish fires have surged 475%. Half of those fires involved homeless people, and Los Angeles in 2023 saw homeless fires double from 2020 to a total of 13,909. The cost of homelessness is dipping into LAFD’s resources on top of the $961 million the city directly allocates to the issue…