Either the city cooked the books, or the means used to gauge this problem is egregiously unreliable. Like most cities on the Left Coast, Los Angeles has a homelessness problem. There are everywhere, to the point where states like Portland are building shack cities with many amenities, including laundromats, kitchens, and shared bathrooms. The sleeping pods are heated in these “safe rest villages.” In some parts of the country, the homeless are treated better than veterans.
The Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority's hobo count isn’t accurate, and even volunteers for the LAHSA know the figure is wrong. Is it because they’re cooking the books to make it seem not as big an issue, or is the app used to track the number of homeless just on the fritz? The city has received criticism that they haven’t done enough to address this issue, which has led to these allegations that LAHSA is manipulating the reports. In one portion of the city, there were at least 297 reported homeless persons in the area, though LAHSA had a zero count for the sector (via The Blaze):
The Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority, a joint commission created by the city and county of Los Angeles, released a report this week that was upbeat, claiming that the county had witnessed an increase in its homeless population of "only" 4.1percent between 2020 and 2022, a significant dip from previous years. However, the report was swiftly condemned by homelessness advocates and homeless individuals as wildly out of touch with reality, and KCBS-TV in Los Angeles found several areas where the report was plainly incorrect.
Jessica Rogers, a volunteer who helped LAHSA perform its count this year, told KCBS that "LAHSA did not get the count right. Nowhere close. Nowhere near." She told KCBS that when she went to help count the homeless in February, she was "scared for her life."
In one area, she claims that she reported a count of 297 homeless individuals, but the LAHSA report inexplicably stated that zero homeless individuals lived in that area. Rogers stated that she tried to report the numbers through the counting app provided by LAHSA, but it repeatedly crashed, so she texted in the number.
"I remember very well what I saw and where I saw it and what it was like," Rogers said. "And to find out that LAHSA recorded zero people on the streets that night is heartbreaking and gut-wrenching."
[…]
Jay Handel, chair of the homelessness committee for the LA Neighborhood Councils, said that he would not rule out artificial manipulation of the numbers by LAHSA, which has been under fire for not doing enough to fix the homelessness problem in the area. "What do they say? Numbers don't lie but people lie," Handel said. "I wouldn't count it out. Knowing how unhappy the county and city are with LAHSA it would not shock me."
I don’t expect this issue to be resolved as long as leftists control the city.