By Reagan Steele – Business & Economic Policy Writer

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued a press release earlier this week celebrating the results of the 2025 Annual Homeless Count, claiming a 17.5% decrease in street homelessness since she took office. Bass credited the drop to her administration’s policies, saying: “Homelessness has gone down two years in a row because we chose to act with urgency and reject the broken status quo of leaving people on the street until housing was built.”

But the numbers tell a darker story.

Since Mayor Bass took office in December 2022, more than 2,500 homeless people have died in LA County. According to coroner data and media reports, around 1,250 homeless deaths occurred in both 2023 and 2024. That means a significant chunk of the “decline” in homelessness came from people dying on the streets—not being housed.

Despite voters approving billions in spending years ago, a scathing April 2024 audit from the Los Angeles City Controller’s Office found that the city failed to properly track billions in homelessness funding. A separate report from the City Administrative Officer revealed the city was spending up to $837,000 to house a single homeless person. And still, more than 1,200 LA-owned housing units remained vacant two years after an $800 million spending spree.

This isn’t just inefficiency—it’s failure. A federal judge called LA’s handling of homelessness a “train wreck” and floated putting the system under federal control. The Department of Justice launched an investigation into the city’s homeless spending practices.

Even as these failures pile up, Mayor Bass continues to push for more taxpayer funding. In 2024, she backed Measure A, a new countywide sales tax increase to fund homelessness programs—even though LA already passed Measure ULA in 2022, a “mansion tax” on high-end property sales that was sold to voters as the solution. That tax has underperformed dramatically, pulling in far less than projected and showing no measurable improvement in outcomes.

The pattern is undeniable: Raise taxes. Spend billions. Leave units vacant. Dodge accountability. Declare victory. All while people die on sidewalks or under overpasses, year after year.

Mayor Bass may call it progress. But on the streets of LA, it looks a lot more like a crisis being repackaged—and sold back to voters—under a different name.

Image credit: Jorobeq at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5 – via Wikimedia Commons