Registration open for 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count
Volunteer registration is now open for the 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count in January. The 2025 Homeless Count will take place on the evenings of January 21, 22, and 23. Volunteers can register at our new Homeless Count website, count.lahsa.org.
“Last year’s Homeless Count marked the first decrease in street homelessness that Los Angeles has seen in years,” said LAHSA CEO Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum. “As we gear up for this year’s count, community support is crucial. We need thousands of volunteers to join us in counting our unhoused neighbors so we can better understand where they are, the services they need most, and what it will take to bring them home.”
Conducted annually, the Homeless Count typically involves thousands of volunteers spread across the 4,000 square miles of Los Angeles County in late January to conduct the Unsheltered Count. Traveling in small groups, volunteers tally the number of unsheltered individuals, tents, vehicles, and makeshift shelters they see in their assigned census tracts.
The Unsheltered Count will begin on Tuesday, January 21, in the San Fernando Valley and metro Los Angeles. Volunteers in the San Gabriel Valley and East Los Angeles will count on Wednesday, January 22. Finally, the Count will wrap up Thursday, January 23, in the Antelope Valley, West and South Los Angeles, and the South Bay/Harbor region.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires a biennial point-in-time count of people experiencing homelessness. In 2016, LAHSA started conducting the Homeless Count annually to provide consistent data and improved analysis of people experiencing homelessness. Government agencies, including LAHSA, use the data collected during the Homeless Count as one of the reference points when developing strategies to end homelessness and determining where funding and resources will have the most impact.
The Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count consists of three elements: the Unsheltered Count (which includes the Youth Count), the Sheltered Count, and the Demographic Survey. LAHSA depends on thousands of volunteers to conduct the Unsheltered Count throughout the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, which includes all of LA County except Pasadena, Glendale, and Long Beach.
The 2024 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count showed something it had not in the last six years: a decrease in homelessness.
In the City of Los Angeles, the Point-in-Time count showed a 2.2% decrease to 45,252 people, and in Los Angeles County, the Point-in-Time count showed an estimated 0.27% decrease to 75,312. Unsheltered Homelessness declined by 10% and 5%, respectively.
Last year’s Homeless Count data suggests that unprecedented coordination among LAHSA and all levels of government on the homelessness crisis is reducing unsheltered homelessness.
In addition, people are moving through LAHSA’s rehousing system faster, according to LAHSA’s Key Performance Indicators: from 2022–2023, year over year, street to interim housing placements through outreach increased by 47% and the number of people moving from interim housing to permanent housing increased by 25%.
While this year’s Homeless Count estimates bring hopeful news, officials cautioned that homelessness persists at unacceptable levels, and the same root causes of homelessness continue to exist throughout Los Angeles County, with economics leading the way.
LAHSA cited the results of the annual homeless count demographic survey completed in partnership with the University of Southern California (USC). This year’s survey found that a majority (54%) of people who became homeless in the last year cited economic hardship as one of the main reasons they lost their home.
The California Housing Partnership’s 2024 Housing Needs Report for Los Angeles County stated that nearly 500,000 households do not have access to affordable housing. The report goes on to state that LA County renters need to earn $48.04 per hour, or 2.9 times the City of LA’s minimum wage, to afford the $2,498 average rent of a two-bedroom home.
The new LAHSA is making the shifts necessary to improve the rehousing system with a commitment to innovation and change. Read more about those changes here:
