A placard asking for help hangs on Donald James' cart as he speaks with people from Central Mississippi Continuum of Care staff during a Point-in-Time Count in Jackson, Miss., Monday, Jan. 27, 2025. PIT Count is a count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness in January.
Los Angeles, California – Just days before Los Angeles officials released the results of the 2025 homeless count, the city’s primary homelessness agency made a major revision—relocating over 400 sheltered individuals from within city limits to other jurisdictions. The move, which reduced the city’s reported homeless population, was not disclosed to local elected leaders until after the numbers were made public.
On July 7, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) informed City Council members that homelessness had declined by 2.5% within the city of Los Angeles. When the data was publicly unveiled a week later, that drop had quietly grown to 3.4%, following the removal of 437 sheltered individuals from the city’s count. The revisions shifted the city’s total homeless estimate from 44,136 to 43,699, reflecting a 475-person reduction in the sheltered population and a 38-person increase in the unsheltered tally.
LAHSA has since attributed the changes to a misclassification in its new housing inventory system, which failed to properly assign “scattered site” shelter beds across jurisdictional boundaries, as required by federal rules. But the timeline of the correction—and the lack of transparency around it—has drawn sharp criticism from City Council members who were briefed on the earlier, unrevised data.
Councilmember Monica Rodriguez said the agency delayed its initial briefing multiple times and ultimately withheld critical information. “Any changes made to the numbers, the public is entitled to know because these are their taxpayer dollars,” she told LAist. Other officials, including Councilmember John Lee, are also questioning the accuracy of the count, particularly after data showed only 78 shelter beds in use in his district, despite efforts to bring 371 beds online.
LAHSA officials maintain that the correction brought the count into compliance with longstanding HUD geographic tagging requirements. But HUD’s rules, according to the agency’s own documentation, did not change between 2024 and 2025—raising questions about how the error went unnoticed until just before the release of this year’s data.
The correction itself was only explained to city leaders in an email on Tuesday, one day after the data had been made public. LAHSA declined to identify which specific shelter sites had been reassigned, citing the complexity of mapping multi-site housing programs. The agency has promised to refine its inventory system for next year.
Although LAHSA insists the revisions do not change the overall narrative of progress, the episode has brought back concerns over transparency and accountability in one of the city’s most politically charged policy areas.
