{"id":382209,"date":"2025-11-16T04:15:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T04:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/382209\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T04:15:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T04:15:14","slug":"real-or-illusory-san-gabriel-valley-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/382209\/","title":{"rendered":"real or illusory? \u2013 San Gabriel Valley Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0titled \u201cLasting Change: Annual Homelessness Count Down Two Years in a Row for the First Time Ever in Los Angeles.\u201d LA\u00a0officials crowed<\/a>\u00a0about the numbers, but the count leaves room for reasonable doubt.<\/p>\n

The annual \u201cpoint-in-time\u201d (PIT) count conducted in February (released in July<\/a>) reported that homelessness in the City of Los Angeles decreased by 2.2 percent in 2024 and 3.4 percent in 2025. The report also stated that homelessness across the County of Los Angeles decreased by 0.27 percent in 2024 and 4 percent in 2025.<\/p>\n

Those small recorded improvements translate into 1,553 fewer homeless people citywide and 3,004 fewer people countywide\u2014not exactly eye-popping reductions. More than 72,000 people remain homeless in Los Angeles County, equivalent to a moderate-sized town. But even those small improvements could be illusory.<\/p>\n

Researchers at the University of Southern California, who help design and analyze LA\u2019s PIT count, report that the sampling\u00a0margin of error<\/a>\u00a0is about 1,300 people, plus or minus, for the Los Angeles County Continuum of Care and about 920 people, plus or minus, for the city. In other words, much of the so-called \u201clasting change\u201d could plausibly be the result of mere error and not because of a true reduction in the number of homeless people. Without changes in the sample design, there is reason to believe that errors will increase.<\/p>\n

After the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision in\u00a0City of Grants Pass, OR v. Johnson<\/a>, many local governments adopted tougher anti-camping laws that resulted in more sweeps of encampments, collection of personal belongings, arrests, and disruption of lives. That created stronger incentives for\u00a0homeless people to hide<\/a>, making it harder for PIT counters to find everyone and skewing results toward undercounting. In LA, underground homeless dwellers have been found in\u00a0tunnels<\/a> and\u00a0vaults<\/a>. It\u2019s unknowable how many homeless people live undetected, but the number is likely\u00a0increasing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In addition to sampling errors and hiding, homelessness numbers drop due to overdose deaths, suicides, homicides, vehicle-related deaths, and fire deaths. (A\u00a0third of all fires<\/a>\u00a0in the City of Los Angeles involve unhoused people.) Those factors reduce homelessness, but in tragic ways.<\/p>\n

Looking at the\u00a0most recent data<\/a>\u00a0on deaths of homeless residents from 2023, the LA County Department of Public Health reported 1,128 deaths due to alcohol or drug overdoses\u201470 percent of which involved fentanyl\u2014and 2,508 total homeless deaths from all causes. Thus, it is plausible that sampling errors plus homeless deaths accounts for the much-celebrated declines in homelessness.<\/p>\n

Undercounting might also occur for purely political reasons. Like most workers, PIT bureaucrats want to please their bosses. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Bass have made it clear that they want homelessness numbers to fall\u2014and fast.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is time to take back the streets. It\u2019s time to take back the sidewalks,\u201d Newsom\u00a0bluntly stated<\/a>\u00a0in May. \u201cNo more excuses. Time to deliver.\u201d On her first day in office, Mayor Bass\u00a0declared a state of local emergency on homelessness<\/a>, but there\u2019s more to it than rhetoric. If additional funding flows to jurisdictions with falling homelessness numbers, then stronger incentives exist to cook the books. Taxpayers should take notice of\u00a0curious happenings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In July, before the public release of the final numbers, 475 sheltered people were suddenly\u00a0removed from\u00a0<\/a>the LA\u00a0<\/a>C<\/a>ity homeless count<\/a>\u00a0without notifying elected officials. Separately, a former information officer for the LA Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), the organization that conducts the official count,\u00a0testified<\/a>\u00a0that her supervisor instructed her \u201cto do whatever we can to make the mayor look good.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a 2025\u00a0report<\/a>, the Santa Monica-based RAND Corporation\u00a0counted significantly more<\/a>\u00a0homeless people and dwellings in three LA neighborhoods than the official count revealed. In Venice, for example, RAND counted 554 people and dwellings. The official count was 173. RAND found a 32 percent systematic undercount by LAHSA in those three neighborhoods alone.<\/p>\n

Data discrepancies, premature deaths, and sampling errors provide strong evidence that LA\u2019s celebrated drop in homelessness is illusory. LA officials should stop gloating and work to achieve real results: Get homeless people off the streets and back on their feet as independent, self-sufficient individuals.<\/p>\n

Lawrence J. McQuillan is a senior fellow with the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., and contributor to the book\u00a0Beyond Homeless: Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes, Transformative Solutions<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this year, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued a\u00a0statement\u00a0titled \u201cLasting Change: Annual Homelessness Count Down Two Years…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":381832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,11890,2961,224,5337,1269],"class_list":{"0":"post-382209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-commentary","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-losangeles","14":"tag-opinion"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115557441448512232","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}