While homelessness reached unwanted levels across the United States this year, Los Angeles is one of only a handful of metropolitan areas to record a decrease in people living on the streets.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released its 2024 homelessness figures, which showed an 18.1% increase across the country .
Those figures come on the back of another significant rise in homelessness in 2023, spurred by rising rent costs and the end of pandemic-era assistance. This year’s increase was blamed on both affordability, as well as a surge in migrants in some states and natural disasters that battered others.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles County , the number of unsheltered homeless actually declined by about 5.1% from 2023, the first decrease the area has reported in seven years, HUD officials said.
California’s population is no longer in decline
In L.A. city, the number of unsheltered homeless dropped by more than 10%. Both the County and L.A. proper reported significant increases in the number of unhoused individuals coming indoors to utilize shelter space — although not all shelters are being used to their full potential .