(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
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“You Have to Move!” [1]

['John Raphling']

Date: 2024-08-14

Without permanent housing, interim shelter does not solve houselessness and is used to justify criminalization

Shelter and interim housing can have great value in getting people off the streets and into safer situations. However, shelter and interim housing do not meet the standards for housing spelled out by international human rights law. As Los Angeles lacks an adequate stock of permanent housing, people can remain in these deficient living situations for extended periods of time, or they leave and return to houselessness.

City officials use the existence of shelter and interim housing to justify, both legally and morally, implementation of criminalization policies—they can say that they offered “housing” before destroying an encampment and scattering its residents. They can move a certain number of people indoors, while the vast majority remain on the streets facing increasing enforcement of laws that punish their existence in public.

According to international human rights law, permanent housing means a place to live that is not temporary or time limited and that meets standards of habitability, affordability, accessibility, and security of tenure. The services agency and city officials have very little permanent housing to offer; instead, they offer various forms of shelter, including hotel rooms, primarily through the Project Roomkey (PRK) and Inside Safe programs, congregate shelters, A Bridge Home (ABH) shelters, Tiny Home Villages, and Safe Camping, which provide space in gated lots for people to set up tents. Despite this variety of options, there is not nearly enough shelter for everyone living on the streets. PRK, for example, peaked in August 2020, sheltering just over 4,472 people; one year later the program only served 1,392 people and continued to decline.

While these shelter situations allow some people to get off the streets and many who stay in them are grateful, they are temporary solutions, at best. Living conditions range from comfortable to uninhabitable. Many people refuse to enter congregate and other shelters due to lack of privacy, safety concerns, and unsanitary conditions. All the shelter options have degrading and even draconian rules that may include curfews, searches upon return to one’s room, prohibitions on guests, pets, and even partners or spouses, limits on keeping property, and other restrictions. Many unhoused people compare the conditions to being incarcerated.

The shelters have not led consistently to placements in permanent housing. City and county officials tasked with optimizing a system to rehouse people calculate that a successful system must have five permanent units for every one interim or shelter bed. This ratio allows a steady flow of people from the streets to shelter to housing. Los Angeles has far fewer permanent units than needed, and so the system stalls. Without that flow, people either stagnate in the shelters or they leave. When people leave, returning to the streets, new shelter beds are available, but these extremely expensive programs have not made a dent in the unhoused population.

The shelter or interim housing system has facilitated criminalization. The ABH shelters are surrounded by Special Enforcement and Cleaning Zones (SECZ) in which city policy empowers and housed neighbors expect police to enforce laws against unhoused people and where, more prominently, LASAN conducts repeated destructive sweeps. Human Rights Watch analysis of LAHSA data shows evidence supporting claims that in advance of high-profile encampment sweeps, city officials held hotel rooms empty so that they could show the public that they were placing people from those encampments into rooms rather than simply scattering them to other unsheltered situations. In doing so, they underutilized the rooms and left others, from less visible locations, unsheltered.

Officials often justify the cruelty of encampment destruction by claiming they have successfully “housed” people, when at most they have moved people into shelter options, often taking rooms from more vulnerable people who need to be indoors. Sweeps of lower profile encampments typically do not even result in shelter placements, especially as shelter beds are also scarce.

Despite the grave need to develop more permanent housing to effectively move people out of houselessness, policymakers in Los Angeles have trended towards prioritizing interim shelter over permanent housing, directing scarce resources away from the long-term solution.

Inside Safe and the Bass Administration Approach to Houselessness

The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, has publicly made houselessness her administration’s top priority and has promised a new approach that will solve the problem. She has issued orders declaring a “state of emergency,” and required city agencies to speed up the process of approving affordable housing developments.

Housing developments funded through Proposition HHH, passed by voters in 2016, should become ready for occupancy and allow for more permanent placements, though they are a finite resource. Measure ULA, a voter-approved tax on property sales over $5 million earmarked for permanent housing development and tenant protections, will give the mayor additional funds. She has promised to access federal and state resources.

However, despite her public pronouncements Bass has been prioritizing interim housing and shelter over permanent housing and has allowed criminalization to continue unabated. She has allocated $250 million to her signature program, Inside Safe, which mobilizes LASAN and police to destroy encampments permanently, while moving their residents to hotel rooms on a temporary basis. As with PRK, many people are grateful to get indoors, while others resent being forced into rooms that often have severe habitability problems. Officials have required people to surrender much of their property for destruction as a condition of accepting the hotel rooms. People who have declined to move into hotel rooms face destruction of their property and banishment from locations where they had been living. While touted as a pathway to housing, very few people have left the hotels for permanent situations—more have returned to houselessness.

As of September 2023, there were only about 1,100 Inside Safe rooms available, requiring choices about who would be placed in them. The Bass administration selection process has prioritized publicly visible encampments as opposed to setting aside rooms for people with the most need. This prioritization appears to be driven by City Council office preferences and complaints from housed neighbors, rather than helping the most vulnerable.

Housing Solves Houselessness

Housing people solves houselessness. Helping people retain their homes prevents inflows to houselessness. Developing and preserving affordable housing allows more people to stay housed and reduces housing precarity that leads to houselessness. Upholding and increasing tenants’ rights empowers them to maintain their housed status. Housing is different from temporary shelter or even “interim housing.”

Most unhoused people simply need a permanent, affordable, habitable place to live. Some people with disabilities need housing with a spectrum of support services attached, often called “permanent supportive housing” or PSH. Ample experience shows that providing PSH to “chronically” unhoused people—those with disabilities who have been on the streets for over a year—is extremely effective, with one-year retention rates around 90 percent. The Housing First model, in which people are housed voluntarily and without requirements of sobriety or treatment compliance, has been successful in a wide variety of jurisdictions in allowing people to stabilize and remain housed.

There are a variety of approaches to housing, each with relative benefits and drawbacks. Prominently, the federal government provides vouchers under the Section 8 program that allows tenants to pay 30 percent of their income in rent while the government pays the rest. There are not nearly enough vouchers for all who qualify for them; people with vouchers often cannot find places to stay due to discrimination and bureaucratic barriers; vouchers do not increase the overall number of affordable units. But, for those who do find housing with them, vouchers have greatly improved their lives.

Non-profit housing developers produce and manage permanent housing and PSH, despite a highly inefficient financing system and an overall shortage of funds. Advocates are calling for Los Angeles officials to convert hotels and unused commercial buildings to affordable housing, and to create land trusts that remove properties from the speculative market so that they can provide permanently affordable housing. While public housing, permanently affordable and financed entirely by government, has been demonized and starved of funding in the US, it can be an effective approach to delivering the right to housing.

Compared to criminalization and prioritization of temporary shelter, which do not solve houselessness, providing permanent housing is cost effective over the long-term, including through savings from reduced reliance on emergency services, lower court and jail costs, and reduced direct expenditures for sanitation, temporary shelter, and police interventions. The intangible human benefits of replacing policies grounded in cruelty with policies of care make housing production and preservation an obvious choice.

Human Rights Watch has documented numerous cases of people who were housed successfully after periods of houselessness. The positive change in the life circumstances of each of these people points to a way forward that will benefit unhoused people as well as housed people and will increase the value of communities in Los Angeles.

Relevant International Human Rights Law

International human rights law recognizes the right to adequate housing. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) articulates and international treaties including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) enshrine this right. The US has signed, but not ratified these treaties, creating an obligation not to undermine their purpose and object. Implementing criminalization while neglecting to guarantee housing for all undermines the right.

The right to adequate housing, as defined by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, is not simply the right to shelter, but to housing that, at minimum: 1) has legal security of tenure; 2) has facilities, like water, sanitation, and site drainage, essential for health, security, comfort, and nutrition; 3) is affordable, without compromising other basic needs; 4) is habitable; 5) is accessible, accounting for disabilities and reasonable accommodation; 6) is located in a place accessible to employment, education, health care, and other social facilities; 7) is culturally appropriate.

The US has signed and ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), obligating it to uphold the right to housing in the context of combating racial and ethnic inequity. The long history and current policies of racial discrimination that have led to the prevalence of Black houselessness call for remedial and reparative actions.

Criminalization in all its forms violates the right to life, liberty, and security of person and prohibitions against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” found in International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) also prohibits cruel and degrading treatment. The US has signed and ratified both treaties, obligating it to comply with them. The UN Human Rights Committee has interpreted policies that punish life sustaining activities, like sleeping, as potentially cruel and degrading treatment. The ICCPR protects against arbitrary arrests, including arrests for the status of being unhoused.

As criminalization exposes Black and Brown people disproportionately to arbitrary arrest and cruel treatment, it may violate the ICERD’s mandate to end discriminatory policies and to mitigate racial harms, regardless of discriminatory intent.



Key Recommendations

As housing is the only proven solution to houselessness, Human Rights Watch calls on Los Angeles city and county governments, the state of California and the US federal government to affirm a right to adequate housing as defined under international human rights law and invest sufficient funds to progressively realize this right. To achieve this right, we recommend developing and preserving sufficient housing that is permanently affordable to low-income people, such as through use of creative approaches like community land trusts and converting unused government and commercial properties to housing. Most immediately, to help slow the spread of houselessness, the city and state should find ways to protect existing tenancies and prevent evictions, while also protecting others' rights.

Because houselessness has increased as government has diminished social safety nets, including the county’s General Relief payments, a basic income program for extremely poor residents, and the federal government’s scaling back of welfare programs, Human Rights Watch recommends restoring and enhancing social protection for all, including through universal social security and systems that ensure access to quality affordable health care for all. The state of California and city and county of Los Angeles should provide voluntary, community-based mental health care for all people, while avoiding systems of involuntary care and detention.

This report details how present and historical racial discrimination, often legally mandated or allowed, has led to highly disproportionate houselessness among BIPOC and especially Black communities. Human Rights Watch urges local, state, and federal governments to reverse laws and policies that have disproportionate negative racial impacts, to direct resources into low-income BIPOC communities that have traditionally been neglected, and to make reparations for past harms.

Given the historical emphasis on arresting and citing unhoused people for existing in public spaces, as detailed in this report, the City of Los Angeles should repeal laws that specifically criminalize unhoused people and discontinue targeted enforcement of other laws specifically against them. The state of California should pass a law forbidding local jurisdictions from enforcing laws punishing people for living in public spaces. Ending this direct form of criminalization will mitigate its cruel impacts while freeing up resources and directing political will to focus on effective solutions based on the right to housing.

To mitigate the health hazards of unhoused encampments and to alleviate suffering in the short-term, the City of Los Angeles should provide services, including sanitation, consistent and non-abusive trash removal, toilets and hygiene stations, medical care, and other assistance, to unhoused people living on the streets. LASAN cleanings should not be destructive and should respect people’s property. Further, the city should prioritize scarce shelter beds for those with the greatest health needs who wish to accept those beds.



Methodology

This report is based on research conducted from April 2021 through March 2024. Findings are based on interviews with 148 people, including multiple interviews with many of them. It is based on analysis of data obtained from various agencies within the City and County of Los Angeles as well as databases from other sources. It is based on review of other research studies, news articles, and historical records. All documents cited in this report are publicly available or are on file with Human Rights Watch and available on request.

An integral part of the research involved Human Rights Watch researchers witnessing and documenting actions by city officials and private actors towards unhoused people in Los Angeles. Researchers were present at numerous sweeps and enforcement actions.

Of the people interviewed, 101 gained their expertise on houselessness through the direct experience of living on the streets of Los Angeles. Of those people, 76 were living unsheltered on the streets at the time of the interview; 14 were in temporary shelter, primarily hotel rooms made available through “Project Roomkey” or “Inside Safe;” 10 were in permanent housing after having been unhoused.

Of those 101 people with direct lived experience of houselessness, 55 were male, 44 were female and two were non-binary or did not identify a gender. We did not ask people to identify their race or ethnicity, but about half appeared to be Black and most were people of color.

We did not ask people to state their age, though many did. We attempted to estimate approximate ages to gain a general understanding of interviewee demographics. While accurately estimating ages of people living on the streets is difficult, our best estimate is that 9 of the 100 people we interviewed who had experienced houselessness were between 18 and 29, 48 were between 30 and 54, and 41 appeared or identified themselves as over 55. The oldest who stated their age was 74. The ages of the remaining three were too difficult to estimate.

Disability is prevalent among unhoused people. Some of the 101 interviewees who had experienced houselessness openly stated that they had some physical disability or mental health condition that amounted to a disability. Others showed obvious signs, like walking with a cane or using a wheelchair. Others indicated that they received disability payments. Using these indications, we counted 40 interviewees who had disabilities, 21 of whom were over the age of 50. This number likely underestimates the prevalence of disabilities among the people interviewed.

We found people to interview by meeting them on the streets in Skid Row, Venice, Van Nuys, Downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, and other locations throughout the city. Community organizers, service providers, and mutual aid workers introduced us to many of them. Most interviews were conducted in person, though some were over the phone or through video conference.

This report uses pseudonyms for nearly all the people interviewed who had personal experience with houselessness unless they specifically asked that their real names be used. We have used pseudonyms to protect people’s privacy, especially given the highly personal and traumatic experiences shared, and to protect people from retaliation by government officials or private individuals.

We interviewed 47 others whose primary expertise was not gained by living on the streets. They included several elected officials and members of other elected officials’ staff; academics whose research involved houselessness and housing policy; lawyers who work directly on issues involving houselessness; people working in government agencies responsible for formulating and implementing policies related to houselessness; service providers outside of government; housing policy experts; nonprofit housing developers; LAHSA outreach workers; housed people living in neighborhoods with unhoused encampments; and community organizers, advocates, and mutual aid workers.

Human Rights Watch reached out multiple times to officials in then-Mayor Eric Garcetti’s administration, but no one would agree to speak to us. The people we contacted included the deputy mayor for Homelessness, the chief of the Office of Homelessness Initiatives, the person responsible for community engagement on Skid Row; the chief housing officer, the director of Interim Housing Strategies. Following Karen Bass’ election as mayor of Los Angeles city in November 2022, her chief of Housing and Homelessness Solutions agreed to a brief interview. Human Rights Watch submitted follow-up questions to the mayor’s staff members responsible for houselessness policy, but has not received responses at time of writing, despite multiple requests. Mayor Bass herself spoke to Human Rights Watch.

We reached out several times to Los Angeles City elected officials as well. Two councilmembers, Mike Bonin and Nithya Raman, spoke to us directly. Councilmembers Joe Buscaino and Katy Yaroslavsky had staff responsible for houselessness speak to us. Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell refused to meet. His staff requested written questions. Human Rights Watch submitted written questions but had received no response at time of writing, and O’Farrell was voted out of office in 2022. Councilmember Kevin De Leon’s staff responded with apparent agreement to arrange an interview, but then did not follow through despite repeated requests.

We reached out numerous times to representatives from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). The senior lead officers on Skid Row referred us to LAPD’s public information officer (PIO), as did the LAPD homeless coordinator. The PIO took no action despite repeated requests from us, and no officers were willing to speak without the PIO’s approval. Human Rights Watch submitted written questions to the PIO based on our findings but received only a very limited response. We asked the PIO for LAPD’s response to key points of our data analysis. The PIO said that they could not answer without seeing our data. We sent them our data but have not received any response. Human Rights Watch did speak informally to officers at the site of encampment sweeps.

We spoke to current and former LAHSA outreach workers under condition of anonymity. Some of those we spoke to asked that their interviews, or some portion of them, be kept off the record or “on background.”

We disclosed to everyone interviewed the purpose of the interview and the intention of using their information in a report on the criminalization of houselessness.

Data

This report includes extensive quantitative analysis of data gained through the California Public Records Act (PRA). We requested a broad variety of data from various government agencies including the LAPD, City Attorney, LASAN, Mayor’s Office, Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), and LAHSA, a joint city and county agency. The agencies complied with the requests to varying degrees. When several agencies did not comply adequately, we sued the city, eventually receiving records substantially responsive to our request through settlement negotiations.

The data analysis in this report centers on presenting the activities of each agency through descriptive statistics. All processing and analytical code, as well as raw data and our original PRA requests, are available on Human Rights Watch’s GitHub page.





Key Definitions

Language choices inform policy choices. The words used to describe the societal situations related to houselessness often determine and are determined by how the public understands these situations. That understanding helps determine what policies government and private sectors implement.

Homeless/unhoused or houseless

Over the years, people have used a variety of degrading terms to label people living on the streets, including “transient,” used by LAPD officers.[3] The word “homeless” came into widespread use beginning in the 1980s.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines a person as “homeless” if 1) they are “living in a place not meant for human habitation, in emergency shelter, in transitional housing, or are exiting an institution where they temporarily resided [for up to 90 days];” 2) they “are losing their primary nighttime residence, which may include a motel or hotel or a doubled up situation within 14 days and lack resources or support networks to remain in housing.”[4] LAHSA uses this same definition, but adds people fleeing domestic violence without resources to obtain permanent housing.[5] These definitions do not fully account for the many people who lack permanent housing while living doubled-up in over-crowded temporary conditions.

Calling a person “homeless” can serve to deny their place in the community. It feeds into policies that would remove people from communities where they live, since they are considered “homeless” and the community is not their home.[6]

Many advocates use the term “unhoused.” This term responds to the fallacy that people living on the streets do not have a home: they do, it is where they live, even if that is a temporary structure or shelter. What they lack is housing. The term emphasizes that people need housing and not simply temporary shelter.

For purposes of this report, Human Rights Watch will use the term “unhoused” or “houseless” to refer to people who do not have housing that meets the criteria set forth by the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in General Comment No. 4: The Right to Adequate Housing (art. 11(1) of the covenant).[7] This includes people living on the streets, in makeshift structures, in temporary or interim housing or shelters, in overcrowded conditions, and in sub-standard housing. This expansive definition reflects the massive scope of houselessness and the fluidity of housing situations—someone living in sub-standard or overcrowded housing one day may be living on the streets the next; someone living in a tent one day may be in a shelter or hotel room the next.

Because policies of criminalization tend to focus on visibly unhoused people, generally with the intention of removing them from sight, this report emphasizes the experience of unhoused people living on the streets.

Shelter or Housing

The CESCR describes adequate housing as meeting the following criteria: legal security of tenure; availability of services, materials, facilities, and infrastructure, like water, energy, and sanitation; affordability; habitability; accessibility; location accessible to employment, schools, health care and other social facilities; and cultural adequacy.[8]

In drafting the comment, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights said:”[T]he right to housing should not be interpreted in a narrow or restrictive sense which equates it with, for example, the shelter provided by merely having a roof over one’s head or views shelter exclusively as a commodity. Rather it should be seen as the right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity.”[9]

Policymakers in Los Angeles often falsely say “housing” when they are referring to shelters, tiny homes, “safe camping” zones, hotel rooms with insecure tenure, and other temporary living situations.[10]

In this report, we use “housing” (sometimes “permanent housing”) to refer to a home that meets the definition of adequate housing in CESCR General Comment 4. Interim or otherwise temporary housing, shelter, and other living situations are identified specifically by what they are.

Encampments

While many unhoused people live on their own scattered throughout the city, a large percentage of them come together to form communities of differing sizes.

City officials and advocates usually call these communities “encampments.” Police enforce laws against “camping” in public spaces.[11]

This terminology is misleading and can feed into the public perception that people are unhoused because of their own choices. Camping is associated with a recreational activity--choosing to spend time outdoors. Unhoused people rarely chose to live outdoors. Rather than camping, they are existing or surviving outdoors. While it might feel more appropriate to restrict a person’s ability to “camp,” it is unfair and cruel to restrict their ability to exist.[12]

This report will use the terms “unhoused communities” and “encampments,” but with the understanding that people are living in these communities and not “camping” as a recreational choice. Encampments are communities built by unhoused people themselves on public land without authorization.

Criminalization

The term criminalization in the context of unhoused people refers to laws that in practice punish unhoused people for simply existing in public spaces.[13] While the laws do not explicitly make being unhoused illegal, by targeting unavoidable and natural human actions, they do so in fact. These laws may include bans on sitting or sleeping in public, keeping property in public, being in a park after certain hours, or living in one’s car.[14] They may also include targeted and systematic enforcement against unhoused people of laws that appear less obviously targeted at unhoused people, like trespassing, asking for money, loitering, drinking in public, urinating in public, jaywalking, smoking bans.[15]

Criminalization, as used in this report, also includes orders backed by threat of arrest to move someone from a location (“move-alongs”) or destruction and confiscation of their property and living structures, including through sanitation department clean-ups or “sweeps.”[16] It can also include coercing people into restrictive shelters or “safe camping” zones under threat of enforcement action, and coercing people into mental health treatment or drug rehabilitation facilities.[17]

Sweeps/Cleanups

LASAN has a vital role in maintaining the cleanliness of public space throughout the city. Its function is essential to the health and well-being of all residents.

LASAN has been mobilized to address the unhoused population in both positive and negative ways. To the extent LASAN performs clean-ups at encampments designed to remove waste and hazardous materials, without confiscating people’s property, without destroying the structures they depend on for shelter, and without instilling fear and abuse, their service is extremely valuable. Unhoused people generally welcome such cleanups, when conducted with predictable regularity and notice.

However, a substantial portion of LASAN cleanups amount to wholesale destruction of encampments, confiscation of property, and destruction of property, including clothing, bedding, tents, medications, personal papers, family mementos, and other personal items. As will be discussed in detail, these cleanups, called “sweeps” by unhoused people and advocates, inflict tremendous harm on people and often do not provide effective sanitation. Sweeps may also amount to encampment “clearances” when they result in permanently removing unhoused communities from a particular location.

Los Angeles City/County

The City of Los Angeles is an independent local municipality, with distinct borders, governed by a Mayor and a City Council consisting of 15 council members, each representing their own district within the city. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has jurisdiction throughout the city, as does the Los Angeles City Attorney. LASAN provides sanitation services throughout the city.

The County of Los Angeles includes the city, but also covers a much larger area and 87 other cities within its borders, along with unincorporated areas. LAHSA is a joint city and county agency.

This report focuses on houselessness and government responses within the City of Los Angeles. However, houselessness does not fit neatly within arbitrary borders. Nor does policy related to houselessness. Los Angeles County initiatives related to housing and services have direct impacts on houselessness in the city.

Because of the frequent intersection of these two distinct jurisdictions, it is not possible to strictly discuss one without reference to the other. While primarily focusing on the city, this report discusses relevant facts related to the county. In some instances, there may be inconsistencies in data due to the inability to distinguish between county and city. This report strives to be clear when discussing data and other facts about which pertain to the county and which to the city.

Interim Housing and Shelter Programs

In recent years, the city and county of Los Angeles and the state of California have initiated a variety of temporary housing or shelter programs designed to address houselessness. This report discusses many of them in detail, including their living conditions and rules, their success in moving people out of houselessness, and, to some extent their cost. This report discusses the relationship of these programs to the larger policy of criminalization.

These programs include:

1. A Bridge Home shelters (ABH): ABH are shelters that house people temporarily in congregate settings but offer everyone their own area, providing some privacy with room dividers.

2. Congregate shelters: These shelters offer large dorm-like settings in which people can stay indoors. Often, they provide cots or mats on which to sleep in open rooms with little to no privacy.

3. Project Roomkey (PRK): PRK was a state and local program in which unhoused people were provided temporary hotel rooms, meals, and some services designed to move them to permanent housing.

4. Tiny Home Villages (THV): THV are gated lots with eight-foot by eight-foot sheds designed to house two people each, with all residents sharing bathroom, shower, and laundry facilities.

5. Safe Camping: Safe Camping set aside gated lots in which people could live in tents with shared bathroom facilities.

6. Safe Parking: Safe Parking facilities are parking lots in which some vehicle-dwelling unhoused people can stay in their cars or vans overnight. Generally, people must remove their vehicles during the day.

7. Inside Safe: Inside Safe, like PRK, offers temporary hotel rooms for unhoused people whom city officials have moved out of encampments. The program promises services and assistance in obtaining permanent housing.





I. Criminalization in Practice: A Case Study

Criminalization, in all its forms, occurs throughout Los Angeles, often in hidden corners of the city with little oversight or attention. The sweep at Naomi Avenue in August 2021 was devastating to the residents of that community and typical of the implementation of such sweeps.

Naomi Avenue: A Little Known Encampment

At 7 a.m. on August 18, 2021, LAPD officers awoke Arturo T. as he slept in the makeshift house he had built under the freeway on Naomi Avenue between 16t and 17t Streets, just south of downtown Los Angeles. They told him that he had 15 minutes to get out of the way before LASAN workers took down the entire encampment.[18]

Arturo had been living at this location on the west side of the street for over a year, along with about 11 other people. Many of them had lived there longer than he had. A similar number of people lived on the east sidewalk across the street. Using scavenged scrap lumber and plastic tarps, they had built structures that provided shelter from the elements, including extreme heat, wind, sun, and cold. They had gathered abandoned couches, chairs, and mattresses to provide comfort and keep their bodies off the concrete sidewalk. They had formed a community of neighbors who provided each other with security and companionship.[19] They cooked meals together and watched out for each other. The area surrounding the encampment is generally light industrial, with few if any residences or retail businesses.[20] Arturo did not waste time. He gathered as many of his possessions as he could and moved out of the way.[21]

The previous week LASAN employees said that they were coming to clean the area soon, but they did not post signs giving official notice or a specific date and time.[22] Over the previous year, LASAN had conducted at least 25 cleanings in the immediate vicinity of the encampment.

Click to expand Image Photos taken by Human Rights Watch on August 18, 2021 at Naomi Avenue in Los Angeles showing LAPD and LASAN implementing the sweep of this encampment. © 2021 Human Rights Watch

Arturo was able to pack some essential possessions before police officers ordered him to stand outside the perimeter that they had marked off with yellow tape. Officers stood next to patrol cars parked at both ends of the block, preventing Arturo and other encampment residents from entering the area to retrieve more of their possessions.[24]

LASAN trucks arrived, including a large flat-bed with a Kubota loader, a trash compactor truck, and a trailer with a portable toilet attached for their workers to use.[25] The city once had put a portable toilet near this encampment for a short period of time, but then removed it, leaving the residents to urinate and defecate in bottles and bags.[26] Because the encampment had no trash cans or dumpsters, a substantial amount of garbage had accumulated around it and its surrounding area. People unconnected to the encampment frequently dumped garbage near where the encampment residents lived, making the situation worse.[27] Months earlier, city officials identified the need for toilets and handwashing facilities to serve unhoused people in this area, but they provided none.[28]

Click to expand Image Photos taken by Human Rights Watch on August 18, 2021 at Naomi Avenue in Los Angeles showing LAPD and LASAN implementing the sweep of this encampment. © 2021 Human Rights Watch

Using the loader and shovels, LASAN workers first demolished the makeshift homes on the east side of Naomi Avenue, then on the west side where they destroyed Arturo’s home and all his remaining property.[29] They heaped his possessions, including bicycles, a television, a bed, a sofa, his clothes and shoes, into the dump truck and crushed them, “like it was worthless.”[30]

They destroyed a brand-new air-mattress, battery packs, food and cookware, as well as paperwork and identification that Lisa G., who lived in the encampment just around the corner on 16th Street, had been storing in a friend’s home in the Naomi Avenue encampment.[31] They only allowed her to remove a backpack and her dog. Another man had his bike, clothing, wife’s clothing, and a small generator taken and destroyed. Another man at the encampment had his work tools, clothing, and his birth certificate destroyed. LASAN took all of an older man’s possessions, including his medications. Others also had their medications destroyed.[32]

The demolition on this day was part of the city’s Comprehensive Cleaning and Rapid Engagement (“CARE+”) program, described as a “full comprehensive cleaning.”[33] General Dogon, an organizer with the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), arrived on the scene with Human Rights Watch as it was happening. He questioned the police officers guarding the north end of the block as to why LASAN was destroying this encampment.

Click to expand Image Photo taken by Human Rights Watch on August 20, 2021 at Naomi Avenue in Los Angeles showing the fence put up by LASAN on the east sidewalk after the August 18 sweep of the encampment there. © 2021 Human Rights Watch

Initially, the responding officer said it was because of a law forbidding encampments under the freeway.[34] Later the officer said it was to ensure that the sidewalk was passable in compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements.[35] However, a few days after LASAN finished demolishing and disposing of everyone’s possessions, structures, and the garbage, they set up a fence on the east side of Naomi Street where 10 to 15 people had lived, and another on the west side, where Torres lived.[36] These fences, which almost entirely blocked both sidewalks, remained in place for about a year and were as much a barrier to people with disabilities as the encampment had been.[37]

According to LASAN records, the “Solids Team” removed around 40 tons of material, about 600 pounds of which they identified as hazardous waste.[38] Much of it was indisputably garbage, but much of it included people’s possessions as described above, their built-up shelters, and furniture essential to create some comfort in a harsh living environment.[39] Sanitation workers are required by protocol to place personal property they have not defined as “hazardous” into bags that are then tagged and transported to a storage facility where they can be reclaimed within 90 days. That day at Naomi Avenue, LASAN did not collect a single property bag, instead destroying everything.

Police officers at the scene told Human Rights Watch that outreach workers had been at this encampment offering shelter placements and services and that some of its residents left with the LAHSA workers.[41] Residents of the encampment denied that any outreach workers had taken people to housing or shelter from this encampment.[42] LAHSA records obtained by Human Rights Watch show that on the day of the demolition, LAHSA contacted one person at the demolished Naomi Avenue encampments, gave that person some food, water, a hygiene kit, and protective masks (PPE), but did not provide or even make a referral for housing or shelter.[43]

LAHSA workers contacted three other people at the immediately adjoining encampment on 16th Street. They obtained “Bridge Housing” for one person that day. This person had been referred to “Bridge Housing” five months earlier, though it is unclear if their placement that day was related to the previous referral.[45] Outreach workers gave one person a tent, then obtained “crisis housing” for that person the following day.[46] Several Naomi Street residents simply moved around the corner onto 16th Street, integrating themselves into an already existing encampment.

Click to expand Image Photos taken by Human Rights Watch of 16th Street, just east of Naomi Avenue in Los Angeles. Photo on the left, taken on August 18, 2021, shows the encampment on the sidewalk. Photo on the right, taken February 23, 2022, shows that the sidewalk encampment had been removed and replaced with fencing, while unhoused people stay on the other side of the street. © 2021 Human Rights Watch

LAHSA records from the preceding two weeks further contradict the police officers' claim that they had been assisting people from this encampment with housing. From August 5, 2021 through the day of the demolition on August 18, 2021, outreach workers contacted 5 people from encampments at or within 250 meters of the Naomi Avenue encampment, providing them with food, water, PPE, hygiene materials and other services, but did not refer any to shelter or housing.[48] During the 40-month period from January 1, 2019 until April 22, 2022, LAHSA provided similar services to 53 individuals at these encampments, referred 19 of them to some form of interim housing or shelter, and obtained interim housing or shelter for a total of 3 of them.[49]

Over the next few months, LASAN, with support from the police, demolished the adjoining encampments on 16th Street and set up fences that blocked the sidewalks as they did on Naomi Street, compelling residents to scatter to other places without offers of shelter or housing.[50]

Arturo T., Lisa G., and the others had to absorb the destruction of their homes and property, then move on and start over at some other location.

II. Overview of Houselessness in Los Angeles

According to 2023 estimates, 46,260 people are unhoused in Los Angeles, over 7 percent of the unhoused population of the entire US, and 73 percent of those are unsheltered, living on the streets and sidewalks, in parks or in vehicles.

Black people make up less than 8 percent of the population of Los Angeles, but nearly one-third of unhoused people; a Black person is six times more likely to be unhoused than a white person in Los Angeles.

57 percent of Los Angeles renter households pay over 30 percent of their income for housing, while 270,000 renter households are considered overcrowded, meaning that huge numbers of people are at imminent risk of houselessness.

Older people are increasingly among the unhoused. The 2022 population estimates found 4,323 unhoused people in the city aged over 62 years.

Around the corner from the destruction of the settlement on Naomi Avenue, a row of tents and plywood and tarp structures lined the 16th Street sidewalk alongside the freeway off-ramp. Alice J., a Black woman who appeared to be in her 60s, sat on a tattered couch next to her structure. Chained to the leg of the couch was her dog, who stood up and growled if anyone approached until Alice assured the dog she was safe.[51]

Alice had been living on the streets for three years. She and her husband, a military veteran and a musician, owned their house until he took a loan against it for a business venture that failed, and they lost everything. He died two years later, leaving her on her own. Earlier in 2021, LASAN officials, with police in support, had destroyed her makeshift home. They took her computer, her bicycles, some kitchen equipment she had bought in hopes that she might find an apartment, shoes she had intended to sell to add to her SSI income, and mementos from her late husband. They told her she could get her possessions from the storage facility, but when she tried, they were not there.

Alice watched the Naomi Avenue operation silently anticipating that her home would be next. She had many of her possessions packed up and stacked onto a cart, ready to move if the dump trucks appeared on her street.[53]

Alice is just one of tens of thousands of people living on the streets of Los Angeles. The Greater Los Angeles Point in Time (“PIT”) Homeless Count (“PIT” Count), put out by LAHSA annually, is an estimate of the number of unhoused people, sheltered and unsheltered, living in Los Angeles. Despite significant limitations with its methodology, and critiques that the PIT Count substantially underestimates the number of people without housing, it can provide a baseline understanding of demographics and show increases and decreases in populations.

In 2023, the PIT Count estimated 46,260 unhoused people within the city limits and 75,518 in the county.[56] These numbers marked an approximately 10 percent increase from the 2022 estimates.[57] The city of Los Angeles makes up 1.1 percent of the total US population, but 7.1 percent of the US's unhoused population.

Encampments and vehicle dwellings have become pervasive parts of the Los Angeles landscape. The 2023 PIT Count found 14,096 cars, vans and recreational vehicles, and 9,342 tents or makeshift structures like the one in which Alice lived, housing tens of thousands of people in the county.[59] The vast majority of unhoused people in Los Angeles are “unsheltered,” while across the US most unhoused people are sheltered.[60] The 2023 PIT Count estimated that 27 percent of unhoused people lived in shelters or transitional housing and 73 percent lived on the streets in the city.[61] Almost all of the growth in Los Angeles’ unhoused numbers is due to an increase in the unsheltered population. The 32,680 people estimated living on the streets in 2023 marks a 15 percent increase in unsheltered houselessness in the city from the year before and more than double the number (107 percent increase) from 2009.[62]

While shelters and transitional housing come with their own problems that can make them unacceptable options to many people, living unsheltered on the streets can mean exposure to the elements—especially extreme heat, sun, wind, cold, occasional but brutal rains, and pollution—vulnerability to crime, and being subjected to law enforcement and other actions by city officials. Access to services is more difficult for unsheltered people.

Racial disparities in the unhoused population continues to be extreme, with Black and Native American people vastly overrepresented among the unhoused in relation to their overall population. The proportion of the city’s unhoused population that is Black is over four times higher (33 percent) than that of the general population (8 percent).

Just as Human Rights Watch was completing this report, LAHSA announced the results of the 2024 PIT Count, which showed a .27 percent reduction in the overall unhoused population for Los Angeles County and a 2.2 percent reduction for the city, the first decreases in many years. The number of sheltered unhoused people increased, while the unsheltered population decreased. These results are encouraging and may reflect a heightened attention to houselessness by city and county officials. Human Rights Watch has not had the opportunity to conduct a thorough analysis of LAHSA’s data; nor are we aware of other such analysis produced before completion of this report. The reduction in makeshift shelters, tents, and vehicles used as shelter was over 9 percent, considerably more than the reduction in actual people counted. This difference could suggest that efforts to remove the most visible signs of unhoused communities have made individuals harder to locate and count.

A. Gaps in the PIT Count

One obvious PIT Count limitation is that the estimates are based on one day or, as in 2023, just a few consecutive days in the year, and are not necessarily an accurate estimate of houselessness throughout the year. In Los Angeles, those days are generally in the winter when unhoused people are more likely to use what resources they have to get indoors, even if only very temporarily.[68]

The PIT counts rely on administrative shelter data and a sample of sight-counts of unsheltered people, tents, vehicles and structures.[69] Many unhoused people make great effort to hide themselves in order to avoid law enforcement, vigilantes, or just being exposed to public view, increasing the likelihood those sight-counts will miss them.[70] Law enforcement and sanitation departments may clear encampments ahead of the counts, making people difficult or impossible to find. Incarcerated or hospitalized unhoused people may not be counted.[72] Perhaps most significantly, the count does not include people who are “couch surfing” or squeezing temporarily into overcrowded units who may flow in and out of unsheltered houselessness.[73]

Leaving people who do not have stable housing and are on the verge of being on the streets out of the count means a substantial underestimation of the problem. US Education Department data on unhoused children, counting those living in motels or doubled-up in other people’s homes, indicate a vastly larger number of unhoused people than the PIT counts estimate.[74]

This undercount means that many unhoused people are left out of consideration and that the scale of the problem is minimized; the methodology of counting visibly unhoused people, whether intentional or not, favors policies of criminalization that drive unhoused people out of public view.[75] A jurisdiction that criminalizes aggressively is likely to lower its count because unhoused people will be harder to find.

B. Who is Unhoused in Los Angeles?

Each person counted in these estimates is a human being with individual circumstances and experiences that led them to be unhoused. Each feels pain and joy, love and fear. Every one of them has hopes and desires. Every one of them has essential needs—a stable, secure, comfortable home; food and water; basic hygiene; social interactions; dignity and privacy and more. Every one of them has a human right to an adequate standard of living that meets these needs.

Bobby M., a 70-year-old Black man who has worked as a truck driver, a roofer, and a forklift operator, has been unhoused in the Skid Row neighborhood for many years. [76] More and more older people like Bobby are unhoused in Los Angeles. The 2023 City of Los Angeles PIT Count estimated 12,031 unhoused people over the age of 55, compared to 9,978 in 2020. Over one-quarter of the unhoused residents of Los Angeles are over 55 years old. [78]

Serena C. lives in a tent with her husband and her young adult son in an encampment in Van Nuys near the ABH shelter. She has moved to various encampments and lived in shelters, but she found that their rules separated her from her family. Both she and her husband have physical conditions that prevent them from working. Her son has seizures often triggered by stress. [79] The 2022 City of Los Angeles PIT Count estimated there were 2,306 unhoused family units (having at least one child under age 18), over 90 percent of them sheltered. Families with children make up almost 30 percent of the US unhoused population, according to a 2021 study. Historically, most unhoused families in the US are headed by female single parents.

Carter L.’s landlord evicted him from his Skid Row apartment just before the pandemic lockdown started in March 2020. People stole from him and assaulted him while he was living on the streets near his former home. He went to the Veterans’ Administration in Westwood, since he had been a US Army medic in the 1990s, but they were unable to get him into housing. He moved into a large encampment along San Vicente Boulevard just outside the fence in front of the massive VA campus, along with dozens of other unhoused veterans, while he waited for a housing voucher. The 2022 PIT Count estimated 1,895 unhoused military veterans like Carter in the City of Los Angeles, nearly 80 percent of them unsheltered. [84]

Sandra C. had to leave her home following a dispute with her ex-partner, forcing her to live on the streets. The residents of an encampment south of Downtown Los Angeles welcomed her and she had lived there for about a year when we spoke with her. She fixes bicycles and sells them. She buys food for her neighbors in the encampment when she has money. [85] The 2022 City of Los Angeles PIT Count estimated there were 13,817 unhoused women—about one third of the total population. An additional 534 people included in the count identified as gender non-binary or “questioning” and 703 identified solely as transgender. [86]

Sage Johnson had to leave her home at age 17 to escape an abusive situation. She avoided living on the streets by staying with friends and relatives on their couches or wherever there was space available in the residence. Eventually she found transitional housing with the LGBT Center and permanent housing in West Hollywood. The 2022 City PIT Count estimates 1,681 unhoused “transition aged youth” (TAY)—those between the age of 18 and 24.The 2023 County PIT Count estimated 3,718 TAY among the unhoused population, 932 more than in 2022, including a doubling of the number of unsheltered TAY. [89]

Sally F. came to Los Angeles to escape her abusive husband in 2021. She has seizures that started after he hit her on the head; she has post-traumatic stress, bi-polar disorder, and anxiety. She stays on Skid Row and has survived assault and rape while on the streets. [90] A 2022 study of unhoused women in Los Angeles County found high rates of victimization for harms, including theft (73.8 percent), domestic violence (48.1 percent), and coerced sexual activity (about one-third) throughout their lifetimes. Over 20 percent of women said intimate partner violence caused them to become unhoused. Women and especially trans and non-binary people reported high rates of victimization while living on the streets. Nearly one-third of unhoused men report having experienced intimate partner or sexual violence during their lifetimes. [94]

Edgar S. lives in a tent on 7th Street in Skid Row. After his mother died, his family split apart leaving him with no support. He has bi-polar disorder and anxiety. He has a heart condition. He had a substance use disorder and went to prison for a drug-related offense, losing his Social Security Disability benefits. He now survives on General Relief (GR) payments of $221 per month and Food Stamps. The 2022 PIT Count estimated that 25 percent of unhoused people in the city have a mental health condition with high support requirements, 28 percent have harmful substance use, 12 percent have a developmental disability, and 22 percent have a physical disability.[96] Many, like Edgar, have some combination of these conditions.

C. Black Houselessness

Connie W. is a Black woman in her mid-50s who has been living in Skid Row for the past four years. She stays on the sidewalk near 6th Street, under a tree. For the first two years she lived in Skid Row, she slept on a piece of cardboard, until someone gave her a tent. She appreciates the protection from the sun and rain that the tent gives her, calling it “half-way decent.” She is part of a small community of people who live side by side and look out for each other.

Connie uses a wheeled walker and describes having “crippling rheumatory arthritis.” She is extremely thin and looks frail, appearing to weigh less than 90 pounds, though she says she weighed 174 pounds when she got to Skid Row. She takes marijuana and drinks alcohol to address the constant pain in her bones. She takes medications for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and for voices she hears and feels these medications help her. She found some milk crates and put a mattress on top of them inside her tent, so she does not have to sleep directly on the concrete.

Connie has been on her own since she was 16. She has some schooling and she worked for 25 years in various jobs, including as a janitor, a cement mason, and a cosmetologist. She styles hair for other unhoused women by her tent on Gladys Avenue.

She had her own apartment, with government subsidized rent, for nine years. Connie allowed her niece, who worked for a cable company and was living in her car, to stay with her. The landlord found out and evicted them both, leaving Connie out on the streets. Some of her family members have apartments or houses, but they are already too crowded for her to move in with them.

Connie stayed in shelters, but she found them unbearable. Though she got priority because of her physical conditions, administrators would place her in the day room where she had to sleep on a mattress on a floor full of people as close as two feet away from her. “A person could be snoring or farting right in your face.” She would have to leave the shelter right after breakfast and only could return later in the day.

She got a Section 8 Voucher after becoming unhoused but was unable to find a landlord who would accept her as a tenant within the time limits. She survives on food stamps and $221 a month from General Relief payments.

The Sanitation Department periodically comes by her sidewalk home and makes her pack up her tent and property so they can clean. After they finish, she usually cleans again with soap and bleach. She keeps a broom and dustpan in her tent and tries to keep her area tidy.[104]

Houselessness in Los Angeles is a result of decades of racial discrimination and systemic policies and practices designed to advantage white people and disadvantage Black people like Connie.[105] Black houselessness in Los Angeles is extreme. The 2023 PIT Count estimates that, while Black people make up about 7.6 percent of the overall population in Los Angeles County, they are 31.7 percent of the unhoused.[106] Almost half of unhoused families are Black.[107] Nearly 40 percent of unhoused unaccompanied children and youth aged 18 to 24 are Black.[108] Unhoused older people are disproportionately Black.[109]

Los Angeles has over 15,400 unhoused Black people out of a population of nearly 300,000, nearly 9,000 non-Hispanic white people out of a city population of over 1.06 million and nearly 19,000 unhoused Latinx people out of a population of over 1.82 million. The odds of being unhoused are 1 in 19 for a Black person in Los Angeles, 1 in 97 for a Latinx person, and 1 in 121 for a non-Hispanic white person. Black people in the city of Los Angeles are over six times more likely to be unhoused than white people.

The rates of county houselessness for white, Latinx, and Asian people are all below their share of the overall population, though Latinx houselessness has risen considerably in recent years.[111] Native American and Alaska Native people make up 1 percent of unhoused people in Los Angeles County but only 0.2 percent of the overall population; Native Hawaiian and Pacific Island people are 0.5 percent of those unhoused and 0.2 percent of the overall population.

The Skid Row neighborhood, which has Los Angeles’ most concentrated poverty and houselessness, is primarily a Black community. Black people comprise 56 percent of unhoused people there.[113] Skid Row’s history as a place of containment of unhoused people, and its history of aggressive policing, are significant to understanding the racial dynamics of city officials’ response to houselessness.[114]

D. Precariously Housed People

While the Los Angeles homeless services system has become more efficient at helping people regain housing in recent years, LAHSA reports that every day, on average, 227 more people become unhoused, while only 207 retain housing.[115] People who lose their homes usually do not go directly to the streets: they may move in with a series of friends or family, sometimes called “couch surfing;” they may then move into a vehicle or temporary shelter or a motel before ending up outdoors.[116]

Sage Johnson couch-surfed until she was able to get into a shelter; Connie W. snuck her niece into her apartment until they were both evicted to the streets and shelters.[117] Harvey Franco lost his job due to an illness and could no longer afford his rent. He moved in with relatives until their landlord raised the rent beyond their means and he went out on the streets.[118]

Californian cities, including Los Angeles, have seen the highest growth in home prices in the nation over the past 24 years. Since 2000, the price of a typical home in Los Angeles has more than tripled. Home values in Los Angeles have grown at a 60 percent faster rate than the average for the 50 largest US cities.

Los Angeles currently has the fourth most expensive house market in the US, behind only three other Californian cities. The “typical” home in Los Angeles is currently valued at nearly $1 million, though estimated values differ per neighborhood, ranging from $563,000 in the Watts neighborhood to nearly $4 million in the Bel Air neighborhood.

Rents have also skyrocketed, having increased by 50 percent in the city between 2015 and 2024. Median rent prices were $2,240 for a 1-bedroom and $3,200 for a 2-bedroom in February 2024.

The City of Los Angeles has the highest rate of housing cost burden and overcrowding in the US.[123] A household that pays over 30 percent of its income for housing costs, including rent and utilities, is considered “cost burdened;” over 50 percent is considered “severely cost burdened.” Almost two-thirds of Los Angeles households rent their homes. In 2022, 57 percent of those Los Angeles renter households were cost burdened, which includes 31 percent that were severely cost burdened. An additional 38 percent of people in owner-occupied units were also cost burdened. With a median household size of 2.58 people, that means approximately 1.86 million people were living in cost burdened households including over a million severely cost burdened. Almost all low-income renter households pay more for housing than they can afford.[128]

In much of west Los Angeles and the northern San Fernando valley, a minority of households rent their homes. The proportion of households that rent is especially high around downtown including the areas east and south of it. Cost burdened households are distributed throughout the city with especially high percentages in the San Fernando Valley (see maps).

In 2020, the city had the second lowest rental vacancy rate in the US and the lowest among major metropolitan areas, reflecting a shortage of homes at the lower priced end of the spectrum.[129] Only about one-half of vacant units are actually for rent or sale, while a growing percentage is held off the market for various reasons, especially an increasing number of short-term rentals. Newer, more expensive units have higher vacancy rates, but are out of reach for low-income renters. Speculative investors, especially in gentrifying areas of the city, often hold housing units vacant to realize increased returns when monetary values rise.

The lack of available affordable homes and the high cost of housing relative to income contribute to severe overcrowding.[133] Families and individuals force themselves into units that are too small for the number of people living in them. About 270,000 households in Los Angeles, almost 14 percent, are considered over-crowded and 80,000 renter households are considered severely overcrowded.[134] No other major city in the US has this level of overcrowding, which places large numbers of people at high risk of falling into houselessness. [135]

E. Death on the Streets

Once a person is living on the streets, the consequences are often dire. After couch surfing, then living in her car, in friends’ garages, occasional hotel rooms, and shelters for over two years, Tanya L. finally obtained a subsidized apartment for herself and her children. She tried to move her mother into the apartment, but the apartment manager said her mother’s status as a parolee was a lease violation. The manager let Tanya remain, but evicted her mother, who had cancer and could not get help from the medical system. She died on the streets.

Houselessness is deadly. Five unsheltered people died each day on average in Los Angeles County in 2020, a 56 percent increase from 2019, following a steady increase from 1.7 per day on average in 2014. The first full year of the Covid-19 pandemic saw that number increase to 5.5 daily deaths on average. In 2021, deaths averaged just over six per day.

Leading causes of death for people living on the streets of Los Angeles County are drug overdoses, especially related to methamphetamine and fentanyl, coronary heart disease, traffic injury, homicide, suicide, and, after March 2020, Covid-19. The average age of death for unhoused people in Los Angeles County is 48 for women and 51 for men.

People who remain unhoused are 80 percent more likely to die than those who regain housing; those who become unhoused after the age of 50 have higher death rates than those who become unhoused at a younger age.

Stressful life situations, lack of access to health care, and exposure to the elements all age people rapidly. Substance use, often to numb the pain of existence on the streets or to help people stay awake to protect themselves, increases the risk of death and contributes to deteriorating health. Death by homicide for unhoused people has increased dramatically in recent years, accounting for 21 percent of all homicides in Los Angeles County in 2021 despite unhoused people making up only about 1 percent of the overall population. Death on the streets is often preventable and almost always brutal.

In September 2021, a woman died in her tent on the sidewalk of 6 Street south of Gladys Avenue. Her neighbors said that she had been suffering through a painful illness for many months. They heard her moaning in her tent, but they were unable to get her medical care. A few days after she died, the Sanitation Department came out and loaded her tent and belongings into their trash compactor truck.

Click to expand Image Photo on the right, taken September 17, 2021, is a memorial to the woman who died on this spot on the sidewalk of 6th Street near Gladys Avenue. Photo on the left, taken on November 4, 2021, depicts a memorial on Ceres Avenue east of 6th Street, that says: “In loving memory of [name redacted] and all the others who have passed away.” © 2021 Human Rights Watch

III. Drivers of Houselessness

The government’s failure to dedicate maximum available resources towards realizing the right to housing and its failure to appropriately regulate the profit-driven housing system has led to dramatic shortage of affordable housing causing mass scale houselessness. Other factors like health conditions, discrimination, family violence, and job loss may explain why a particular individual is houseless.

Over half a million low-income renter households lack affordable housing in Los Angeles, while housing development is concentrated in the high end of the market.

Since 2000, renter income in California has gone up by 8 percent, while rents have increased 37 percent; the median two-bedroom unit in Los Angeles was $2,650, about 50 percent of the median income.

Government at all levels has substantially decreased social protection for people living in poverty; Los Angeles County General Relief payments are capped at $221 per month, less than the $312 paid in 1989; the federal government has discontinued direct spending on affordable housing development, while making Section 8 rental assistance available to only about one-quarter of eligible people.

Government policies, including red-lining, zoning, freeway construction, “urban renewal,” and mass incarceration, along with private discrimination and de-industrialization, have enforced racial segregation and contributed to Black poverty and houselessness.

A. Economic structure

The cause of houselessness is, in one sense, extremely simple: the housing system in Los Angeles and throughout the US, does not create or maintain enough affordable, quality housing for all residents.[147] For this reason, a certain number of people necessarily will be unhoused, primarily those who are disadvantaged by the economic system due to discrimination, disability, lack of family or government support, or some other circumstance.[148]

Individuals lose their homes for a broad variety of specific reasons:

Ida J. had to stop working to care for her ailing mother. When her mother died, Ida inherited her debt and could not pay the mortgage. She lost the house and lived on the streets in Skid Row before getting temporary shelter in a motel room. She is in her mid-60s and has sciatica which requires her to use a walker. [149]

Ramon T. worked as a roofer. He, his wife, and two very young children had an apartment that was infested with roaches and barely habitable, and still they could not afford the $1,200 per month rent. The landlord evicted them. His family moved into his wife’s mother’s already crowded apartment, while Ramon set up his tent in MacArthur Park. [150]

Kate W. fled her abusive husband with her children. The domestic violence shelters would not let her stay because her children were too old, so she moved into a large encampment in a riverbed in Ventura County. She got a job and an apartment in Los Angeles, but the pay was not enough for her to cover rent. After her eviction, she continued to work while living in an encampment in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles. [151]

Carla P. was going to school, but after five years of sobriety she relapsed into drug addiction, leading her to lose her housing. [152]

Sean O. had a temporary job at an Amazon warehouse with no benefits and low pay. After the Christmas season they laid him off. He was arrested for possessing drug paraphernalia and placed on probation. After losing his job, he could not pay fees associated with his probation or his share of the family’s rent. His mother and sister kicked him out of their house, and he ended up living in his truck in Venice.[153]

Many precipitating factors can lead any one person into houselessness, including losing a job, experiencing an eviction, having a mental health condition, family violence, an injury, illness or other medical condition, or a rent increase, for example. People facing these circumstances do not necessarily lose their homes, but the likelihood increases given the overall shortage of affordable housing. For example, 1 in 85 adults with disabilities is unhoused, compared to 1 in 344 adults without disabilities.[154] A substantial share of unhoused people have disabilities, but as these statistics indicate, most people with disabilities do not become houseless. Similarly, most people losing their jobs or facing a health emergency or with substance use disorder do not become houseless, but a certain number do.[155] Most people report that their entry to houselessness began with being removed from their home through an eviction.[156]

Individual factors may explain which individuals become unhoused, but structural features inherent to the market-based approach to housing and enabled by government policies explain the prevalence of houselessness.[157] In the US and especially in Los Angeles, housing is largely treated as a commodity. While people experience their housing as “home,” it also functions, primarily for many people, to build wealth.[158] Homeownership is often as much an investment as it is a place to live; landlords buy properties as a source of income. A market system that treats housing as a commodity does not enable the creation of enough affordable housing for all people without massive government intervention.[159]

Large private equity firms, whose obligation is to their investors, have increasingly bought up housing stock across the US and in Los Angeles.[160] These companies have bought distressed and foreclosed properties, taking advantage of the global financial crisis of the late 2000s to expand their holdings and dominate housing markets.[161] While the industry sometimes claims to be saving affordable housing, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing Leilani Farha has pointed out that they tend to purchase existing housing and make it more expensive.[162] Specifically, she noted, companies seek out properties that they consider “undervalued” because the rents are not as high as the market will bear.[163] Then they raise rents and cut back maintenance, often driving the existing tenants out, in their efforts to squeeze as much profit as possible from their investments.[164] Private equity firms have bought about 13 percent of homes in the US.[165] In Los Angeles, housing grabs by private corporate landlords have disproportionately impacted Black neighborhoods.

More fundamentally, under a market system in which the goal of real estate development is to build wealth, it is not economically rational for developers large and small to build housing that is affordable to people with low incomes, absent government intervention.[167] Helmi Hisserich, former deputy mayor for housing and homelessness under Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former member of Mayor Richard Riordan’s business team, said that profit-driven developers build high-end housing due, in part, to costs of construction and land.[168]

Building and land costs are especially high in a coastal city like Los Angeles because, among other reasons, land is limited due to geography, suburbanization, and single-family home zoning. Developers are driven to make profit rather than to provide for unhoused or precariously housed people, and the profit margins on high-end homes incentivize developers to build expensive ones. The demand for such homes consumes much of that limited land. Heidi Marston, former executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Agency, explained that non-profit affordable housing developers simply cannot compete for available land on the open market.[171]

The 2023 Los Angeles County Housing Needs Assessment Report found that over half a million low-income renter households do not have access to affordable housing and the average monthly rent requires a person to make almost three times the minimum wage to avoid being rent-burdened.[172] A 2021 study found that Los Angeles had only 20 available affordable rental units for every 100 extremely low-income households.[173] With the bulk of housing production concentrated at the high end of the market, the amount of affordable housing remains well below the needs of the population.[174]

The City of Los Angeles Draft Housing Element 2021-2029 Housing Needs Assessment (2021 LA City Housing Needs Assessment), a study generated every 10 years by the city planning and housing departments, evaluated housing needs and production from 2014 through 2021.[175] To meet estimated needs, the goal for that time period had been 82,002 total units, including 35,412 above moderate income, 13,728 moderate income, and 32,862 low and very low-income units. The total number given permits for development was 103,973—a seeming success. However, 92,407 of those units were for those with above moderate income, 2.6 times greater than the need at that level. Housing development to serve low-income people fell vastly short of the goals.

Projecting forward to the next 10 years, the 2021 LA City Housing Needs Assessment anticipates a massive increase in the need for housing, including 184,721 units for people with low, very low, and extremely low incomes, and another 75,091 for people with moderate incomes.[177] They anticipate new construction will not remotely meet these needs, while overproducing for above moderate-income people by more than 50,000 units.[178] To meet the needs, construction of affordable units will need to increase 2,291 percent by 2029.[179] Such an increase is highly unlikely without substantial government investment.

A 2023 study of housing development across the US found that “multifamily production was extraordinarily strong,” but it mostly targeted the high end of the market. From 2015 through 2022, the share of new units with monthly rents over $2,050 doubled to 36 percent of the market, while the share of units with rent below $1,050 dropped from 22 to 5 percent.

High levels of construction of higher cost housing have not driven costs down and made housing more affordable.[182] Developers leave units empty rather than lower rents or rent them out short-term to individual or corporate tenants.[183]

Click to expand Image Photo taken by Human Rights Watch on August 26, 2021, shows a tent on Spring Street by Arcadia Street in front of an apartment building advertising units for rent. © 2021 Human Rights Watch

The area surrounding the encampment near City Hall where Sonja Verdugo first lived is filled with recently built market rate housing with vacancies. The land on which these buildings sit used to be parking lots.

The Downtown section of Los Angeles has relatively high vacancy rates, but also has the highest concentration of people living on its sidewalks.[184] For-profit developers and property owners have built luxury apartments and converted low-income units into above-market rate housing.[185]

Houselessness tracks gentrification.[186] With rising housing costs, relatively middle-income people seek out lower-cost housing in neighborhoods where lower-income people, often Black and Brown people, live. Their ability to pay more pressures the price of that housing upward and reduces the stock available to people who cannot afford as much.[187] Speculative housing developers invest in these neighborhoods with rising home prices to convert previously affordable units into higher-end market rate housing.

Developers have targeted the areas surrounding and even within the neighborhood of Skid Row for creation of upscale, expensive housing, as more wealthy people choose to live in the city core. The Echo Park neighborhood, a traditionally working-class Latino area, has changed drastically over the past two decades, driving up housing costs and displacing longtime residents. David Busch, an unhoused person and advocate who had been living in an encampment there, told of a Latina woman, a grandmother, who had lived in Echo Park her entire life.[188] Unable to afford rent, she lost her house. Not wanting to leave her home and community, she set up a tent in a large encampment by Echo Park Lake. She stayed there until police destroyed that encampment in March 2021 and dispersed its residents.[189]

Gentrification has been ongoing for decades in the Venice neighborhood, as has houselessness. In the mid-2000s, a US Housing and Urban Development subsidized building on the boardwalk that provided affordable homes to dozens of people living on social security disability payments, was converted to a market rate hotel. Units now rent for between $269 and $359 per night.[190] Several of the people displaced by the conversion moved to nearby encampments on the boardwalk or on 3rd Street and some of them have died while living outdoors. Many other residents of these encampments were part of a multi-generational community of working class Black and Latinx people in Venice who had been priced out of their housing. When Google and other technology companies moved to Venice in the early 2010s even more high-income people came to the area, driving housing prices up and accelerating gentrification.[193]

In Los Angeles, the lack of affordable housing and prevalence of poverty create widespread housing instability and houselessness. The 2021 LA City Housing Needs Assessment found the median household income in Los Angeles to be $62,000 per year, well below the cut-off to be considered low-income for a family, and that the most available jobs in the city paid under $30,000 per year.[194] About 22 percent of Los Angeles households live on less than $25,000 per year.[195] People with such low incomes have little flexibility if their rent increases, work hours diminish, or they have an unplanned expense like a health emergency or a traffic accident. Such precarity leaves people on the brink of losing their homes.

Wages in Los Angeles and throughout California have not kept up with housing costs. Since 2000, renter income in California has gone up 8 percent, while rents have increased 37 percent.[196] Los Angeles has among the highest rents of any city in the US. In 2021, the median two-bedroom unit cost $2,650 per month, about 50 percent of the median household income.[197]

Income inequality combines with the sheer numbers of people living in poverty or at its edges to drive houselessness.[198] Los Angeles is home to many very wealthy people and massive numbers of people with little or no wealth. Wages for Californians in the bottom half and bottom tenth of earners have remained stagnant for at least the past 40 years, while wages for the top 5 and 10 percent of earners have risen substantially.[199]

This inequality means some people can afford very expensive housing, thus incentivizing profit-driven developers to build for them and driving the housing market up, while the vast majority of people compete over the insufficient affordable housing stock.[200] With rising housing costs, middle- and even upper-income people seek out less expensive options, making it even more difficult for lower-income people to find homes.[201] A report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that California ranked 49th among US states for housing units per capita and that 50 percent of households could not afford their housing costs.[202] Los Angeles has among the nation’s most severe housing shortages for low-income people.[203] Half a million renter households in Los Angeles cannot afford their homes.[204]

B. Property Values, Housing, and Houselessness

While the commodification of housing--combined with governmental failure to invest in affordable housing--contributes to creating the conditions that lead to houselessness in the US, concern with monetary property values dominates public policy towards housing and unhoused people. “Free market” ideology resists regulations on speculative, profit-driven development of housing and developers and property owners exert their influence over government to promote laws and policies that help them build wealth.

Some scholars observe that the emphasis on home ownership as wealth-building vehicle, promoted by government subsidies and guarantees, along with profit-maximization in the housing rental market, insure that property values, seen strictly in financial terms, guide policy related to houselessness.

Many policymakers and much of the public perceive social or public housing as a “give-away” to undeserving people and as crime-ridden slums. These perceptions are deeply connected to racism. They become self-fulfilling when that perception leads to disinvestment and subsequent deterioration of neighborhoods where poor people live. Many in the public blame those who have “lost the competition” for housing for their own circumstances, viewing them as disposable and subject to banishment from sight.

Government actions—from disinvesting in social supports that meet human needs to removing regulations that would restrain abusive profit-maximizing practices to subsidizing the commodification of the housing stock—have created the conditions in which widespread houselessness exists throughout the US and prominently in Los Angeles. Over the past several decades, the federal government—including under both Republican and Democratic administrations—has drastically cut social protection programs, at the same time that well-paying working class jobs disappeared when the US economy restructured and lost much of its industrial base.

At the local level, for example, state law requires all counties to provide a monthly payment for basic survival to qualified people with no other source of income. These General Relief payments in Los Angeles County were $312 per month in 1989, equivalent to $770 in 2024 dollars. In 2024, the payments were $221 per month, as they have been since 1992 when the California legislature amended the law to allow counties to cap the amount they pay at 62 percent of the 1991 official federal poverty line.[214] In addition to gutting this program by failing to keep up with rising costs of living, the agencies that administer it enforce rules designed to remove people from their rolls to save money.[215] Cutting this and other social protection programs means more people risk falling into houselessness and fewer can escape it.

In place of social supports for people living in poverty and otherwise marginalized people, and instead of making the long-term investments in affordable, non-market housing needed to address the crisis, government policies frequently default to criminalization and removing unhoused people from public view, limiting their perceived potential negative impact monetary property values.

C. Federal housing policy

In response to massive houselessness during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government created the Federal Housing Administration and began funding and building public housing to provide permanently affordable homes for low-income people on a grand scale.[216] Under the public housing model, the federal government paid the full costs of building and maintaining the housing.

In Los Angeles, the Housing Authority (HACLA), which administers public housing, had 8,627 units in 1959, but had only added 305 more units by 1995.[217] Its total stock has steadily dropped since then, leaving HACLA with only 6,488 units of public housing in 2021.[218] There is only one unit of public housing for every 100 people in the city of Los Angeles living in a household with an income below the federal poverty line.

Most of these units were built in the 1950s and have maintenance costs associated with buildings of that age. Public housing funding in Los Angeles, which comes nearly exclusively through federal Public Housing Agency (PHA) grants from HUD, has more than doubled since 2007, without adding new units. Presumably much of this money is spent on maintenance costs for aging buildings. Even with the increase, the federal government still has not adequately funded these costs.[221]

In the 1960s and early 1970s, federal policy shifted away from building and maintaining permanently affordable public housing to subsidizing building by private developers.[222] About 50 percent of the US federally assisted affordable housing stock is owned by for-profit entities.[223]

Programs created by the 1961 National Housing Act and the 1968 Housing and Urban Development Act, referred to as the Section 236 and 221(d)(3) programs, for example, offered private developers extremely low interest rates on mortgages, and guaranteed return on their investment, in exchange for them keeping the units they developed affordable for a set time period—usually 40 years. They also gave developers the right to pay off their mortgages after 20 years. Once the developer paid off the mortgage, either after 40 years or as early as 20 years, they could charge market rates for rents.[225] Hundreds of thousands of units of housing built under these and other programs across the US have been or soon may be removed from the stock of affordable housing.[226] As the federal government has long ago discontinued these programs, they are not replacing the lost housing stock.

In Los Angeles, affordability restrictions for 9,412 units of housing financed with federal and state subsidies are scheduled to expire by 2031 and an additional 47,286 will end after that date.[227] Private owners in expensive housing markets like Los Angeles have great incentive to shed affordability restrictions.[228]

In the historically Black and working class, but now heavily gentrified, Oakwood neighborhood in Venice, for example, 190 units in 10 buildings of the Holiday Venice development have subsidies and affordability restrictions expiring in 2029.[229] These buildings were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s by Black community members using Section 236 subsidies, but they have since fallen into private ownership. They are home to many of the last remaining Black and Latinx families in Venice, who have organized effectively over the years to maintain the affordability restrictions on these buildings.[230]

In the 1970s, housing policy shifted further away from new construction towards programs subsidizing rents. The “Section 8” programs allow low-income tenants to pay only 30 percent of their income as rent, with a subsidy going directly to a private landlord who charges an approved “market” rent.[231] Two basic categories of Section 8 subsidies continue to exist today.[232]

Project-based Section 8 is a subsidy attached to a building that allows the landlord/developer to pay operating costs through rents covered by the subsidy.[233] Project-based Section 8 subsidies are used to help finance housing developed by housing authorities and private developers.[234] Like other government subsidies to private housing developers, project-based Section 8 is time limited, allowing these developers to “opt-out” of their contracts and obligations to rent to lower-income people after a certain time-period.[235]

The second type of Section 8 program provides a qualified person with a voucher that they can take to a private landlord guaranteeing that they will pay 30 percent of their income for rent and the housing authority will cover the difference between that 30 percent and a determined “market rate.” While vouchers help reduce the amount people have to pay for rent, the money goes to the property owner, and the program does not expand the stock of housing.[236] Section 8 vouchers give people more choice about where to live, so long as landlords will accept them.[237] Voucher availability is limited by lack of funding and millions of eligible people across the US cannot get them.

By the 1980s, the federal government had almost entirely cut off direct funding for new housing development, instead focusing on Section 8 subsidies and further privatizing affordable housing production.[239] As part of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, it created the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program (LIHTC).[240] Under LIHTC, which remains the primary federal funding source for affordable housing today, the government gives investors tax credits to incentivize development of low-income housing.[241]

LIHTC housing now accounts for almost half of all federally assisted affordable units.[242] However, without additional Section 8 subsidies, LIHTC housing is not necessarily affordable for the lowest income people most at-risk of homelessness.[243] Affordability requirements generally last 30 years; investors may be able to opt-out of them after 15.[244] This expiration can cause instability for tenants in tight housing markets like Los Angeles.[245] By 2029, affordability requirements for several hundred thousand units of housing funded by LIHTC across the US are scheduled to expire.[246] California gave developers incentives to accept longer affordability restrictions, and, in 1996, California required future LIHTC projects to remain affordable for a minimum of 55 years.

In addition to moving away from directly funding and building affordable housing, the federal government has drastically reduced its overall spending on housing.[248] Reduced funding has hampered efforts to maintain existing housing, leading to deterioration of the affordable housing stock, which may impact availability across the country and funding for new units.[249] Further, the system by which non-profit housing developers finance affordable housing developments using tax credits and multiple other sources of funding, including from private sources and from different levels of government, has become highly complicated, expensive, and inefficient, contributing greatly to the failure to meet the need.[250]

Since the 1980s, the federal government has passed various housing initiatives, but never funded them adequately.[251] The 1990 National Affordable Housing Act purported to help preserve housing with expiring subsidies primarily through block grants to local jurisdictions.[252] This program has not been funded to meet the need and has seen major cuts in recent years.[253] Also in the 1990s, the HOPE VI program led to the demolition of tens of thousands of “severely distressed” public housing units, only some of which were replaced by affordable units for low-income people, causing further displacement.[254] The National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF), part of the 2008 Housing and Economic Recovery Act, aimed to develop 1.5 million units of affordable housing.[255] However, Congress did not begin funding the program until 2016.[256] It paid for development of 739 units that year and the preservation of several hundred others.[257] There are currently bills proposed in Congress to fund housing development and preservation.[258] US President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation proposed large sums of money for affordable housing, but Congress did not pass it.[259]

Beginning in the 1980s, federal homelessness policy emphasized sheltering unhoused people instead of creating the housing they needed.[260] The 1987 McKinney Homeless Assistance Act created and funded programs to provide shelter, transitional housing, and services for unhoused people, but very little permanent housing.[261] Similarly, the “Continuum of Care” model, developed by HUD in the 1980s, emphasized programming ahead of housing.[262]

In the early 2000s, the federal government adopted a nominal “Housing First” policy to address houselessness.[263] Housing First means placing people in stable, secure housing first, then taking steps to address other needs, such as voluntary mental health services, or treatment for problematic substance use.[264] State and local governments, including California and Los Angeles, claim to adhere to the Housing First model. However, few jurisdictions have dedicated sufficient resources to implement a true version of Housing First.[265]

The 2009 federal Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act (HEARTH) program continued the pattern of funding shelter, transitional housing, and services without putting enough resources into permanent housing.[266] Former US President Donald Trump’s administration explicitly rejected the Housing First approach, instead focusing on removing regulatory barriers to private housing development and supporting law enforcement responses.[267]

Meanwhile, even as the federal government has dramatically reduced funding for affordable housing that would help people living in poverty over the years, it has supported those who could afford to buy a home by allowing them to deduct mortgage interest payments from their taxable income. This tax deduction amounts to a $70 billion yearly subsidy to middle- and upper-income people.[268]

D. State and Local Policies in California and Los Angeles

At the state and local level, investment in affordable housing and in prevention of houselessness has been sporadic, though recent years have seen renewed emphasis in Los Angeles and California. Los Angeles voters, for example, passed Proposition HHH, a $1.2 billion bond to finance affordable housing, in 2016, and Measure ULA, a tax on high-end real estate transaction to pay for affordable housing and eviction prevention, in 2023. The state of California has been investing in a variety of programs to develop more housing. However, structural and philosophical barriers remain.

The laws that govern the landlord-tenant relationship generally allow landlords to do what they want with the property. Los Angeles’ Rent Stabilization Ordinance (LARSO), which regulates some rentals in the city, provides limited eviction controls but landlords can get around them by doing some remodeling of their units or taking the units off the rental market.[271] In January 2023, the City Council passed tenant protections that also apply to rental units not covered by LARSO, including a requirement that landlords have “just cause” for evictions and prohibiting eviction for non-payment of rent unless the amount owed exceeds one month’s fair market rent. Other tenant protections, like guaranteed representation in eviction proceedings, are not available.

According to media reports, many for-profit developers and major landlords have made significant efforts to influence Los Angeles City Council members.[273] They have invested huge sums of money into lobbying efforts. They have contributed to city council campaigns and organized to defeat council members who have favored renters’ rights. Several city council members and their staff have been indicted and convicted in recent years for corruption involving alleged payments from real estate developers.[276]

In 2018, changes in state law allowed the city to enforce long-dormant “inclusionary zoning” laws that require new developments in some areas to include affordable units, but they have not been in effect long enough to have major impact.[277]

The Ellis Act, a state law which allows landlords to evict tenants in rent controlled or rent stabilized units and convert those units to high-priced housing, has led to the removal of nearly 30,000 homes with tenant protections from the Los Angeles rental market since 2001.[278]

While not investing sufficiently in measures that will reduce houselessness and promoting market-based laws and policies that encourage the commodification of housing, federal, state, and especially local governments continue to invest heavily in criminalization.

E. Houselessness in Los Angeles is a Manifestation of White Supremacy

The high rate of houselessness among Black residents of Los Angeles is the result of decades of laws, policies, and practices that discriminate against Black people and other people of color.[279] It is the result of a commodified housing market that devalues Black lives. It is the result of systemic racism that pervades policing, education, health care, employment, and other systems and disadvantages Black people in the competition for scarce housing resources. Much of the houselessness in Los Angeles, and much of the rest of the country, is a manifestation of white supremacy.[280]

Racist policies and practices leading to modern houselessness date back centuries.[281] The land on which Los Angeles now sits is home to the Tongva people, but it was taken from them by Spanish colonial settlers and Catholic priests who enslaved and forcibly converted some, killed most, and banished others.[282] In 1850, California passed a law punishing “Indians” found to be loitering by forcing them to perfo

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