Recent data published by LAHSA—the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority—debunks the misconception that the majority of Los Angeles’ homeless population are transients who migrated to Southern California.
Several years ago, the LAHSA, a joint county/city agency, added a question to its homeless survey asking each person how long they had been in LA and where they first became homeless.
LAHSA’s 2019 homeless count found that 64 percent of the 58,936 LA County residents experiencing homelessness had lived in the city for more than 10 years. Less than a fifth (18 percent) said they had lived out of state before becoming homeless.
More than half of the people surveyed in LA cited economic hardship, like large medical bills, as the primary reason they fell into homelessness.
The survey also found that nearly a quarter (23 percent) of homeless adults lost their housing in 2018 and were experiencing homelessness for the first time. According to the New York Times, in LA, a renter earning the minimum wage of $13.25 an hour would need to work 79 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom apartment.