Thousands of volunteers throughout Los Angeles County this week will help quantify, through a census, the scope of homelessness in their communities, by counting how many of their neighbors are unhoused. The count was suspended last year, during the early peaks of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) will be coordinating a countywide effort to count and estimate the number of people experiencing homelessness on a given night, tallying residents who are staying in shelters, tents, vehicles and other makeshift dwellings.
Volunteers will deploy from throughout the county, based on the following schedule:
- Feb. 22 in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys;
- Feb. 23 in West Los Angeles, Southeast Los Angeles, and the South Bay; and
- Feb. 24 in Antelope Valley, Metro Los Angeles, and South Los Angeles.
Long Beach, Pasadena and Glendale conduct their own independent counts, which are then also included in the overall county figures released by LAHSA. In 2020, the county reported 66,436 total people experiencing homelessness.
The tally is done to help determine the amount of federal government funding that will be allocated to LAHSA, and to those various cities, to provide services. The count also serves as a way to educate people about how many of their neighbors, including friends and sometimes family, are facing hard times.
“It’s when you really see how much people are struggling,” said Laura Rathbone, who is the director of a vehicle parking program based in the northeast San Fernando Valley, which is in the city of Los Angeles.
The 2020 count found that 41,290 were homeless in the city Los Angeles, a 16% increase from the prior year, with 28,852 unsheltered and living in dwellings that include tents and vehicles.
Even though Rathbone has taken part in the count for the past five years, and regularly does outreach, she is still surprised by what she learns — such as when she recognizes friends or acquaintances, who are employed or are attending school, who cannot afford to pay for housing.
“Sometimes when you’re doing the count you’ll see someone you know, who you didn’t know was experiencing homelessness,” she said. “And I think that’s when it’s really eye-opening — to know how it can happen to anybody. Or when you see a mom with kids, sleeping in a car.”
Rathbone said this year, North Valley Caring Services, where she works, is one of the deployment sites for LAHSA’s homeless count. She’s hopeful an accurate count can ensure that people in her community and others get the services and housing they need.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit, driven mostly by volunteers, offers not only “safe parking” sites, but also a breakfast and shower program, support for families living in motels, a weekly food pantry and an after-school youth program.
As for the count, Rathbone said Thursday that many deployment sites still need volunteers, including their own. So far, their volunteers include many “first-timers,” so she is eager to get their impressions after the count.
“I think everyone’s going to be like, ‘I had no idea,’ ” Rathbone predicts. “And I think people will want to be more involved, and probably help.”
LAHSA official say volunteers can sign up at: https://www.theycountwillyou.org.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles city has agreed to suspend sanitation department-led enforcement activities that temporarily displace people living on the streets in tents and makeshift dwellings, during the three-day count.
During such operations, people are required to tear down their homes and remove themselves from where they live, for sanitation cleanings.
Los Angeles city officials noted, however, that despite the agreement to suspend these operations, each council district is also free to opt out, and to move forward on those cleanings.
The suspension of such operations, which are sometimes accompanied by law enforcement presence, is typically requested before each count, to help ensure the accuracy of the results. Such operations can force people to shift people from council district to council district, potentially skewing the data and what it reflects about each districts’ or communities’ needs, as well as the perceived abilities of a political official’s efforts to address homelessness.
Advocates who oppose such operations reported that they were continuing to take place during the past week. Ongoing cleanups have been reflected on city sanitation schedules.
The mission
The larger purpose of the count is to determine how much funding local homeless services agencies receive. Every two years, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires LAHSA and other similar agencies to do a “point-in-time” count, to reflect the number of unhoused people on a given night.
Long Beach, Pasadena and Glendale will apply for funding from the federal government separately after their independent counts.
Typically the count is done in January, but because of the winter COVID-19 surge fueled by the omicron variant, it was pushed back to February.
Two years of pandemic have had a particularly harsh impact on unhoused people — and the virus continues to take its toll. According to the county Department of Public Health on Friday, the COVID death rate among the homeless between Dec. 2, 2021, and Feb. 13, 2022, was 52 per 100,000. For the county as a whole, the death rate in the same period was 26 per 100,000.
The stark difference comes despite a dramatic drop in the homeless COVID death rate from the previous winter. According to the county, the death rate in the 2020-21 winter surge among the homeless was 237 per 100,000 —roughly four times the rate of the 2021-22 surge.
“COVID has created not only a health crisis, but contributed to a housing and workforce crisis, too,” said Alhambra City Council member Adele Andrade-Stadler. “We won’t know all the repercussions for years.”
The pandemic forced the cancellation of last year’s homeless count. Prior to that, LAHSA organized the county on an annual basis.
LAHSA made adjustments to the count’s process this year to address COVID-19 safety, including:
- Setting up outdoor sites for deployment of volunteers;
- Providing online training to reduce the time volunteers spend at deployment sites, and providing COVID-19 safety instructions in that training;
- Urging volunteers to form two- to three-person “safety bubbles” when they sign up;
- Requiring that volunteers wear masks;
- Encouraging volunteers to be vaccinated; and
- LAHSA also will be using a mobile app for recording and uploading the count data, rather than paper sheets.
Scattered short-term housing efforts have been built recently all over the county, including an array of new “tiny home” villages and other shelters. And Project Roomkey secured many hotel and motel rooms around the region, aiming to stem the spread of COVID-19 among the unhoused. Nonetheless, officials fear the county’s homeless crisis deepened during the pandemic.
After pouring an unprecedented $12 billion into homeless housing and services last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed this year to add another $2 billion, with additional funding for mental health and substance-abuse treatment. The county and city of Los Angeles have also added millions in spending to their homeless strategies.
Many experts say, however, that longer-range housing strategies are still insufficient amid the state’s enduring affordable housing crisis. Debate on the topic has dominated among elected officials at the state, county and local levels. And the issue is expected to frame many key election races on the horizon. In the city of L.A., for example, each of the major candidates has laid out their own strategy for addressing homelessness.
Local approaches
The county’s individual communities will use the count to buoy and refine their local strategies.
The count in Long Beach, originally scheduled for Jan. 25 at the city’s Multi-Service Center, will be held Thursday, Feb. 24. The count will stage at The Grand, a wedding and event venue at 4101 E. Willow St., Long Beach, instead of the Multi-Service Center –– one of the city’s homeless services buildings –– because the area is friendlier to COVID-19 social distancing, said Health Department spokeswoman Jennifer Rice Epstein.
The 2020 count showed Long Beach had 2,034 unhoused residents, up from 1,894 the previous year. That’s a 24% increase.
In response, the city has pursued several temporary and permanent measures. Earlier this month, City Council members gave the go-ahead to explore tiny shelters to temporarily house and serve those experiencing homelessness.
The city has also opened and closed several temporary shelters during the pandemic. In December, the city opened a winter shelter on Hayes Avenue, not far from the Multi-Service Center. That shelter is set to close by the end of March.
Long Beach has operated several Project Roomkey sites since 2020, sheltering more than 200 people during the pandemic. It has also purchased the Best Western Hotel on Long Beach Boulevard and the county has purchased two larger motels, which were slated to be turned into more permanent housing this year under another state program, called Project Homekey.
Redondo Beach opened a 15-unit Pallet shelter fit with portable showers and toilets on a city public works yard near South Bay Galleria Mall, capable of housing two adults or one single person in 2020. The city reported no significant increases in crime in the areas surrounding the shelter — a main concern of individuals opposed to the projects.
In 2021, Wilmington followed suit, and opened a 75-unit Pallet shelter for its residents.
Torrance is the latest South Bay city to take on its homeless crisis — but their proposed 40-unit tiny home project is still a ways off from completion. Construction officially began on the project in December — but officials just secured funding to purchase and install the Pallet shelters in January.
The city expects the Pallet homes to be delivered sometime in late April or May, barring any unforeseen circumstances. Once the Pallet shelter is up and running, the program will undergo a one-year probationary period to determine its long term viability.
“This is money well spent,” said Los Angeles Supervisor Janice Hahn, whose office is providing $450,000 in funding for Torrance’s shelter, in a statement. “These tiny homes are going to be a way we can get people off the street, give them a safe, supportive place to stay, and help them into permanent housing.”
Cities across the San Gabriel Valley are gearing up for counts on Tuesday. Alhambra, West Covina, El Monte, South El Monte, Duarte/Irwindale, Monrovia, San Gabriel and Baldwin Park will all begin theirs at 8 p.m. Azusa Mayor Robert Gonzales said his city will do its count Tuesday morning.
Baldwin Park on Nov. 20 took dozens of homeless individuals off the street with the opening of Esperanza Villa, a village of 25 tiny homes built to house individuals who were either homeless or on the brink of becoming homeless. The city this week announced it received another grant to build more bridge housing.
Andrade-Stadler will be working her city’s count in Alhambra. She intimated it is not easy getting truly accurate numbers.
“This is just a snapshot of people who are unhoused,” she said. “We know that there are families doubled up and young people living on couches. These numbers are more difficult to count, because they have temporary housing.”
According to Denise Menchaca of the San Gabriel City Council, her city’s count is typically between 10-12. She expects to have 21 volunteers Tuesday.
Like Long Beach, Pasadena volunteers were scheduled to mobilize on Jan. 25-26 but opted to postpone its count until Feb. 22.
Months prior to the January announcement, Pasadena Salvation Army officials joined local dignitaries on Tuesday, Oct. 12, to break ground on the much anticipated Diane & John Mullin Hope Center, a 65-unit development for individuals experiencing homelessness that will also include a state-of-the-art food bank, on-site library and 9,000-square-foot Social Services Center on the ground floor.
Pasadena’s 2021 count was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the number of homeless individuals in Pasadena held relatively steady in 2020, down just 3% from 2019.
In Whittier, the homeless count comes after the opening of a permanent homeless shelter in August 2021.
“We’re hoping to find the count shows there is a significant decrease in unsheltered people and an increase in sheltered people,” City Manager Brian Saeki said.
Opening the shelter enabled city officials to enforce Whittier’s curfew and anti-camping laws, per a settlement in a landmark homeless lawsuit.
City officials have been dealing with the homeless issue since 2019 when major encampments cropped up at the Whittier Boulevard greenbelt area, and Leffingwell Ranch and Parnell parks, all since cleared.
Brian Tabatabai of the West Covina City Council believes this count will be beneficial.
“Unlike some cities that have concentrated areas of unsheltered residents, we have a sprawling city with many parks and empty spaces that many of those unhoused aren’t always seen,” he said.
“This count will allow us, at least for one night,” he added, “to have an idea of how many of our neighbors do not have a safe and secure place to put their heads down at night.”
City News Service contributed to this report
