Annual Trends Among the Unsheltered in Three Los Angeles Neighborhoods: The Los Angeles Longitudinal Enumeration and Demographic Survey (LA LEADS) 2024 Annual Report

The most recent full year of results from the ongoing Los Angeles Longitudinal Enumeration and Demographic Survey (LA LEADS) study, a unique longitudinal study combining bimonthly enumerations and annual surveys of individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness in three neighborhoods in Los Angeles, California—Hollywood, Skid Row, and Venice—revealed a meaningfully different picture of unsheltered homelessness in 2024 compared with past years. The number of unsheltered people declined, likely driven by increased throughput to interim and permanent housing assets. However, multiple measures of acuity among people remaining on the street appear worse, suggesting that extending the past year's progress may require additional strategies.

Our enumerations show that the number of people living on the streets in the LA LEADs study area dropped significantly in 2024 for the first time since the project began in 2021. Unsheltered homelessness across these three areas fell by more than 15 percent (500 people) in total. In the race to bring everyone indoors, this is an encouraging finding relative to two prior years of flat or growing unsheltered populations. However, a closer examination reveals that the relationship between this progress and specific city or regional policies remains unclear.

Geographically, a nearly 700-person decrease in the combined unsheltered populations of Hollywood (a 49-percent decline) and Venice (a 22-percent decline) was offset by a 170-person increase in Skid Row (9 percent). In Skid Row, a decrease in the average age of unsheltered residents, a decline in reported time on the streets, and an increase in reporting eviction as a cause of current homelessness suggest that there has been significant turnover in the unsheltered population but that, on net, outflows remained lower than inflows over the past year.

Demographically, rough sleeping (i.e., living literally unsheltered without a tent, makeshift shelter, or vehicle) showed no significant decline in any of the three LA LEADs neighborhoods. This most vulnerable form of unsheltered homelessness is also the most common in our study area, representing about 40 percent of the total unsheltered population that we enumerated as of December 2024. Of the remaining tent encampments in our combined study area, 80 percent are in Skid Row.

There is good reason to believe that some of these trends may be linked with at least two high-profile city policies—Inside Safe encampment resolutions (which move people from targeted encampments to hotels and motels for temporary housing and services) and the enforcement of the Los Angeles Municipal Code's 41.18 anticamping ordinance (which provides for the relocation or removal of persons dwelling in specified public areas). But the strength of such a connection is difficult to pin down. Record numbers of Inside Safe encampment resolutions are consistent with Hollywood's 2024 decline, but Venice saw virtually no engagements related to that initiative. Meanwhile, the equivalent of 12 percent of Skid Row's unsheltered population was cited for Los Angeles Municipal Code 41.18 violations in 2024, yet that neighborhood's unsheltered homeless population grew.¹ Thus, crediting changes in unsheltered homelessness to specific programs—or understanding the relationship of those changes to new inflows of people—requires more study.

Regardless of its cause, the shift away from tent-dwelling toward rough sleeping presents clinical, tactical, and strategic challenges that the homelessness services system must address if 2024's progress is to continue. Clinically, already strained service providers may become further challenged as their average client becomes more vulnerable from the unique tolls of sleeping rough. Tactically, street outreach teams will likely become less efficient as their average client becomes more mobile and thus harder to maintain contact with. Strategically, encampment-based housing initiatives will become less effective as the number of encampments declines. Indeed, evidence for all of these shifts is already emerging in our demographic surveys.

We expanded our demographic survey effort in 2024 to more than double the number of respondents compared with 2023, allowing us to obtain more-reliable data on the unsheltered populations of Hollywood, Skid Row, and Venice. Notable findings from this year include the following:

• Respondents reported staying in the same location for shorter amounts of time relative to past years. This finding is consistent with the removal of shelter in place orders and increases in sanitation and other encampment resolution efforts—most common in Hollywood—that either move unsheltered people indoors or periodically displace them, leaving a more transient, mobile, and dynamic population.
• Hollywood's population changed dramatically in 2024: There were fewer Black or African American unsheltered residents, and respondents were more likely to report receiving benefits, income, or both. Health status reports also worsened compared with previous years in this neighborhood, and respondents were more likely to report having been in jail and less likely to report having received safe sex or harm reduction resources, documentation assistance, and housing assessment assistance than in 2023.
• Venice's population continues to report slightly higher education levels, higher rates of receipt of Social Security and disability benefits, and higher income. Respondents in Venice are also more likely to be employed than those in the other LA LEADs neighborhoods. Venice respondents also had the highest rates of currently having a cell phone and a driver's license. Receipt of Social Security benefits, overall income, and reports of receiving medical services since being on the streets increased relative to 2023.
• The fraction of respondents who reported that they were sleeping rough when they were surveyed more than doubled in both Hollywood and Venice compared with past years.
• Relative to the populations in other neighborhoods surveyed, the unsheltered population in Skid Row continues to skew older, female, and Black. This population is also less likely to be working and more likely to report simultaneously having mental health, physical health, and substance use disorders. Respondents in Skid Row were more likely to report staying in the same location for three years or longer and less likely to report being forced to move by law enforcement or housed residents than respondents from the other two surveyed neighborhoods.
• Twenty-six percent of survey respondents reported having prior foster care experience.
• People ages 62 and older and those earning less than $99 per month were significantly less likely to be searching for housing than younger people or those with higher incomes.
• While interest in becoming housed remained high across respondents from the three neighborhoods (91 percent), the number reporting being on a waitlist was still relatively low (38 percent). Respondents from Venice were simultaneously least likely to report ever being offered housing or shelter (51 percent) but most likely to accept most forms of it when an offer was made. Across all three neighborhoods, the reported rate of receiving offers of supportive housing was low (13 percent). Group shelter offers were higher at 39 percent, and had a reported acceptance rate of less than 50 percent.
• The three highest-rated housing-related needs that respondents reported were storage of possessions (54 percent); being allowed to stay with a partner, child, pet, or roommate (40 percent); and being allowed to stay in a particular neighborhood (39 percent).

On balance, our survey results point to either no change or a decline in multiple markers of well-being. While most of the population continues to express interest in becoming housed, the level of housing placement assistance remains low. Combined with evidence from our enumerations, these results suggest that additional policies will be needed to extend 2024's success. We hope the data and analyses presented here will help policymakers, service providers, and the broader community in the effort to create such policies.

Recommendations

Our findings support two overarching recommendations:

1. Policymakers should continue to prioritize and streamline the creation of permanent housing assets. In Los Angeles County, 26 percent more people entered permanent housing in fiscal year 2023–2024 compared with the previous fiscal year (County of Los Angeles, 2025). This enhanced throughput—enabled in part by the opening of new bond-funded permanent supportive housing units, Proposition HHH (e.g., Los Angeles Housing Department, undated)—freed up interim housing beds for unsheltered residents. Continuing to fund and build these assets with urgency is critical to ensuring Los Angeles's substantial remaining unsheltered population has the quickest route indoors.
2. Outreach and engagement strategies should be tailored to address rough sleepers specifically. Multidisciplinary outreach teams need to prioritize this group, which may require greater collaboration across geographic areas and improved communication and data-sharing. Monitoring the results of new care-coordination models, such as the MacArthur Park Care Collaborative (Newton, 2025), will be essential. Importantly, outreach should focus not just on offering shelter but on building trust and relationships. Because rough sleepers often lack the social connections that programs such as Inside Safe may rely on (Dones and Espinoza, 2024), strategies should emphasize fostering these connections, particularly with outreach staff.