By: Nina He

For six years, L.A.’s homelessness count drop remained the same—that is, until on Friday, last week. In 2022, just after took she office, Mayor Karen Bass began effort to move the homeless into motel rooms.
Mayor Bass’s signature program was Inside Safe. With the collaboration of the Los Angeles City Council, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and more, tireless workers have brought over 21,000 homeless off the streets.

Today, her efforts began to bear fruit. According to numbers released this week, the overall number of people who were experiencing homelessness dropped by 2.2 percent, and the number of people that didn’t have homes in the city dropped by 10.4 percent.

This news couldn’t have come at a better time. On Friday, the Supreme Court declared a ban on sleeping in public, which might make it easier to reduce the homeless population in some cases—but not with Los Angeles. The city was able to bring people off the streets without arresting anybody.

“The only way to address this crisis is to bring people indoors with housing and supportive services,” Mayor Bass said. “In the City of Los Angeles, we will continue leading with this approach. We cannot go backwards—we must continue innovating and moving with intention and urgency.”

Even though lots of people have been given temporary homes, the city has struggled with finding the homeless in permanent homes.

Dr. Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, said, “It shows some signs of progress, or at least, bending the curve. We’re beginning to do the right things, but we’re not doing them at scale.”

It’s much better for people to sleep in a shelter—however provisional it is—than out on the streets, but they still need more permanent homes and jobs. While Los Angeles’s homeless count has dropped for the first time in six years, taking people off the streets definitely needs more work.

But homelessness is just one of the many problems Mayor Bass has to work on. Other than that, L.A. faces the brunt of the Urban Heat Islands. Dark, concrete islands absorb sunlight during the daytime, and at night, release the heat, preventing the city from cooling down.

The city also faces air quality concerns. Surrounded by mountains on all sides, the polluted air gets trapped in the L.A. basin, with no ways to escape. There’s also water scarcity, traffic congestion, and waste management.

There’s no telling with the future will be, but Mayor Bass will definitely have a lot of work in front of her.