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iAUDIT! - LAHSA’s three-day 2026 Point in Time (PIT) Count started last Tuesday, January 20. According to a press release sent to the media, the count, “The Count is an opportunity to reflect on the life-saving impact of our collective investments, the challenges we continue to tackle together, and the humanity of the homelessness crisis”.
We should consider the press release’s statement in terms of the Count’s spotty history. According to an LAist article, the 2024 count was “complicated by policy changes at LAHSA, shifting guidelines and technical problems — with marked differences in how people were counted in the city of L.A. and in other areas of L.A. County”. Another LAist article cited RAND as estimating the count could have undercounted the homeless population by as much as 7,900; more than the combined decrease in homelessness claimed by leaders in 2024 and 2025. For years, LAHSA’s count has been plagued by missed areas, glitchy software, and an inability to empirically justify how it makes assumptions about the number of people sleeping in tents and vehicles. In court testimony, a former LAHSA official called the count “smoke and mirrors.” Instead of the roughly 75,000 unhoused people LAHSA counts, a 2024 report from the Economic Roundtable puts the number as high as 139,000. In reality, it is almost impossible to accurately count the number of unhoused in an area as large as Los Angeles County, because the homeless population, by its nature, is transient and people move from place to place.
Yet LA’s leaders continue to insist homelessness has declined based on the PIT count. They cite numbers that have been largely discredited by professional survey firms, questioned by other social researchers, and alleged to have been fixed by former managers. As with other inconvenient truths, leaders ignore or attack facts that don’t fit their narrative.
According to HUD, the PIT count should be used as a planning tool, directing resources to the most effective programs and the areas most in need. A January 21 LAist article notes the count will be used to determine funding going to cities under Measure A. LAHSA and other leaders have a very fluid definition of how the PIT count should be used. As I described in a July 21, 2025, column, LAHSA’s presentation on that year’s count stated, “The Count is best interpreted as a snapshot of homelessness at the regional level”, and that it is not useful for community or neighborhood level counting. However, many LAHSA contracts are based on the counts within Service Planning Areas (SPA’s). LA County is divided into eight SPA’s. A contract for outreach services may be based on the PIT count’s estimate of unhoused people within a SPA and require a provider to contact a certain percentage of those people, with another requirement to refer a designated number to housing. So, when it suits LAHSA, it claims the count is regional or county-wide, but when it comes to allocating resources, it uses community-level numbers.
None of the problems with the count have stopped leaders from bragging about a “trend” in declining homelessness. 2024’s reduction was called “statistically insignificant” by the USC professor who helped LAHSA with data processing. 2025’s year’s reduction was plagued by missed count areas and questionable administration. Whatever one’s definition of “trend” is, it surely is not two years of dubious and minor reductions.
Contrast LA’s dogged insistence that the PIT count is accurate and confirms a reduction in homelessness with the City of San Francisco, which also has a history of miscounting its unhoused population. The City has at least admitted its mistakes and is completely revamping its count, replacing undertrained volunteers with professional survey takers. Perhaps new mayor Dan Lurie’s focus on homelessness program reforms affected the decision, or maybe program leaders in The City have grown tired of using inaccurate data.
LA’s leaders treat the Count as a public relations event, trotting out dubious numbers in carefully staged press events. The count has become just one more tool to be used to control the narrative about homelessness in Los Angeles. We need leaders who do more than just talk about reducing homelessness. We need leaders who will share the truth with Angelinos and make decisions based on facts. San Francisco understands that. Is it too much to ask the same of LA’s leadership?
(Tim Campbell is a longtime Westchester resident and veteran public servant who spent his career managing a municipal performance audit program. Drawing on decades of experience in government accountability, he brings a results-driven approach to civic oversight. In his iAUDIT! column for CityWatchLA, Campbell emphasizes outcomes over bureaucratic process, offering readers clear-eyed analyses of how local programs perform—and where they fall short. His work advocates for greater transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness in Los Angeles government. )
