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BY THE NUMBERS - The latest homelessness count released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) offers a glimmer of hope, but let’s not kid ourselves. The fact that homelessness in the City of Los Angeles dropped by 3.4% and that street encampments have slightly declined is not a victory. It's a marginal shift in the face of a decades-long humanitarian emergency that still leaves more than 72,000 of our neighbors without a permanent home. That’s not progress—it's a warning that we must stop accepting “less bad” as good enough.
Despite the data showing a two-year trend of slight reductions in unsheltered homelessness, we are still failing at a fundamental level. Seven people die on our streets every day. Tens of thousands remain in encampments, shelter beds, or vehicles. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent. And yet, the residents of Los Angeles—housed and unhoused alike—feel no real relief. That is unacceptable.
The reason is simple: the City and County of Los Angeles have been throwing enormous sums of money at this problem without a coherent, accountable, and centralized strategy. Instead of a unified, focused effort, we have a fragmented system of agencies, departments, and programs that often work in silos, duplicate efforts, and get bogged down in bureaucracy. It’s time to stop tinkering around the edges and finally deliver real results.
We need leadership. Not more reports, not more panels, not more feel-good headlines. We need a Homelessness Czar—a single, empowered official with the authority to coordinate across jurisdictions, align resources, and cut through red tape. Someone who answers to the public, not to a dozen different committees or advisory boards. Someone who can drive urgency and accountability every single day until we turn this crisis around.
Some have touted the slight decreases as evidence that their approach is working. I respectfully disagree. The public deserves transparency, not spin. Yes, there was a 7.9% drop in unsheltered homelessness in the city. Yes, interim housing placements are up slightly. But let’s look at the whole picture: over 43,000 people are still homeless in Los Angeles, and LAHSA itself says the region needs more than 485,000 affordable housing units to meet the demand. At this pace, as Supervisor Lindsey Horvath noted, it could take centuries to end homelessness. That’s not a strategy; that’s a slow-motion catastrophe.
I commend the front-line service providers, case managers, and outreach workers who are doing heroic work with limited resources and under an often-confusing policy framework. But they are not the problem—the system is. When LAHSA was formed, it was supposed to be a collaborative solution between the City and County. Instead, it has become a cautionary tale in how not to run regional governance. The County has already begun pulling funding and forming its department. The City appears poised to follow. But creating new bureaucracies without fixing the structural dysfunction will only waste more time—and more lives.
Here’s what we should do instead:
- First, empower a single point of accountability to lead a unified homelessness response across all relevant agencies.
- Second, prioritize outcomes over process—focus on reducing the time it takes to get people off the streets and into real housing.
- Third, implement a transparent performance dashboard so the public can track progress—or lack thereof—in real time.
- Fourth, invest not just in housing, but in the wraparound services that keep people housed: mental health care, substance use treatment, and job training.
- Fifth, enforce compassionate but firm policies around encampments. We cannot allow public spaces—such as sidewalks, parks, and schools—to remain in a permanent state of crisis while we wait for ideal solutions to materialize. We must act now, with both compassion and clarity.
Let me be clear: homelessness is not a problem that can be solved overnight, and it is not one that any single person or program can fix alone. But what we can do—and must do—is stop accepting mediocrity. Stop tolerating a system that is more focused on managing homelessness than ending it. And stop assuming that anyone who questions the current approach is somehow anti-compassion.
As a businessman and community leader, I’ve spent my life solving problems, building teams, and creating results. I’m running for City Council because I believe Los Angeles is better than this. I believe we can, and must, lead with courage, clarity, and competence. And I believe the West Valley and the rest of this city deserve a government that treats homelessness not as a press release opportunity but as the defining moral crisis of our time.
The latest numbers are a wake-up call. Now it’s time to answer.
(Tim Gaspar is a Businessman and Candidate for L.A. City Council - West Valley)
