L.A. County’s homelessness more severe than Bay Area’s
Rising rents and a lack of affordable housing have hit California’s two largest metro areas hard over the past decade, contributing to a rise in homelessness.
But one has struggled more than the other, at least according to data from a closely watched metric.
This year in Los Angeles County, there were about 7 Angelenos experiencing homelessness for every 1,000 residents, while in the Bay Area, there were about 5 per 1,000 residents.
L.A. County is a more densely populated urban area with dozens of cities and 10 million residents, while the Bay Area is home to 7.8 million people in nine counties.
Back in 2009, 4 out of every 1,000 residents were homeless in both regions. Starting in 2013, L.A. started to see a larger increase. Though the Bay Area saw numbers climb back up in 2019, it wasn’t to the same levels as in L.A.
That’s according to the Point-in-Time Count, a tally conducted on one or several winter nights every other year. Experts acknowledge the PIT is just a snapshot that probably undercounts total homelessness, not capturing people doubling up with friends and family, for example. San Francisco officials estimate some 20,000 people will be homeless throughout the course of this year.
But while imperfect, the PIT is the best comparable data between jurisdictions and is reported to the federal government. Here’s what the data shows:
L.A. county has a higher rate of people living unsheltered — on the streets, in tents or vehicles — than the Bay Area.
This year’s data shows that 1 in every 200 Los Angeles County residents lives without shelter, whereas in the Bay Area that number is about 1 in every 250 residents.
Unsheltered homelessness rates have almost doubled in Los Angeles since 2013, compared to an increase of nearly a third in the Bay Area.
L.A. County has a higher rate of people living on the streets and a higher portion of people living in temporary settings such as emergency shelters or transitional housing than does the Bay Area. This year, the sheltered homeless rate in L.A. was 2.1 out of every 1,000 residents, compared to 1.4 out of every 1,000 residents in the Bay Area.
Sheltered homelessness rates have increased by 40% since 2013 in L.A., but only rose by 5% in the Bay Area during that time period.
Both regions shelter about the same proportion of their homeless populations.
Why did total homelessness rates in L.A. outstrip the Bay Area’s? There’s no definitive answer, but interviews with homelessness officials and advocates as well as research point to a few possible reasons.
Housing affordability is the No. 1 driver of increases in L.A.’s homelessness count, said representatives from L.A. Homeless Services Authority, which covers the city and a majority of the county, and the county-run Homeless Initiative.
L.A.’s spike in homelessness in 2013 coincided with a time of rising rents, as more people entered the housing market after the recession, but supply couldn’t keep up, said Molly Rysman, chief programs officer at the Homeless Services Authority.
The county estimates it’s short 500,000 affordable units for low-income families.
The Bay Area also faces an affordable housing shortage, but a key difference between the regions is that although rent is higher in the Bay Area, incomes are also far higher.
The median household income in the Bay Area was 57% higher than L.A.’s in 2020, while typical rent in the Bay Area is a little more than 10% higher, according to the census and real estate data company Zillow. Angelenos have to earn more than double the minimum wage to afford some of the cheapest units in L.A., said Cheri Todoroff, director of the Homeless Initiative.
“A lot of folks have low incomes, live in poverty and now have very high rents, and that’s always a recipe for increases in homelessness,” Rysman said.
Rysman and other experts said reduced federal aid and a nationwide shortage of housing vouchers also contribute to local crises.
“Cities with larger populations and deeper pockets of poverty have been hit massively harder from all of the federal affordable housing cuts that got us opening our shelters 40 years ago,” said Paul Boden, director of the anti-homelessness nonprofit Western Regional Advocacy Project.
Seeing these spikes in homelessness, L.A. and the Bay Area both dramatically expanded resources starting around six years ago.
Experts said it’s nearly impossible to compare resources and spending on homelessness between the two regions because they include multiple entities and local, state and funding sources. But it’s possible to look broadly at the responses from L.A. and San Francisco counties.
L.A. acted a bit faster than San Francisco in getting dedicated local funds for homelessness. L.A. County put a measure to fund housing and homeless services on the ballot in 2017 and created the Homeless Initiative to administer $355 million annually from it.
A similar measure in the city of Los Angeles authorized $1.2 billion in bonds for supportive housing in 2016.
Shelter beds in L.A. increased by 57% from 2018 to the most recent county housing inventory report in 2021. Permanent housing grew by 16%.
L.A. county now spends about $800 million annually on homelessness, including some state and local funds, according to Todoroff. It got an additional $1.5 billion in one-time pandemic funding on top of that.
That total doesn’t encompass all spending in the county on homelessness, because dozens of cities spend on their own. L.A. Homeless Services Authority alone has an annual budget of $729 million, with $331 million coming from the county.
By comparison, San Francisco, with its population of 874,000, is spending $672 million this fiscal year on its homelessness department.
San Francisco passed its own measure, Proposition C, to fund homelessness response in 2018. Up to $300 million per year was tied up in a lawsuit until 2020, but with funding unlocked, spending on homelessness topped $1 billion last year, boosted by state and federal pandemic funds.
Comparing county housing inventory reports from 2018 to 2021, permanent housing beds in San Francisco rose 27%. Shelter beds dropped 18% during that time, part of pandemic closures, but that number has grown again to 3,571 as of this September.
More spending alone doesn’t mean progress: While San Francisco’s budget ballooned since 2016, so did its homeless population, leading to criticism and calls for accountability.
Still, San Francisco’s investments seem to have paid off in some respects. The county was one of few in the state where homelessness fell over the past three years, with a 3.5% decrease in total homelessness and a 15% drop in unsheltered homelessness.
Boden wasn’t impressed: He criticized the city for investing in enforcement to make homelessness appear less visible and also said it was easier for a smaller jurisdiction to reduce numbers.
The real problem is that despite San Francisco housing thousands, and L.A. tens of thousands of people over the past few years, they’ve both struggled to keep up with the number of people becoming homeless. San Francisco estimated this year that for every one person who gets housed, four lose housing.
At least 20,470 people “fell into” homelessness in the Bay Area last year, according to a report from the California Interagency Council on Homelessness. In L.A., that number was closer to at least 27,770.
Officials want to invest more in prevention and simple, cost-effective solutions that can make a big difference — such as helping someone with a onetime payment to avoid eviction.
“People are one paycheck, one car repair, one health emergency away from falling into homelessness,” Todoroff said.