By Marion Apio | Contributing Writer | California Local News Fellow

Black residents continue to bear a disproportionate burden in Los Angeles County’s housing crisis, according to new data from the 2026 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count.

Figures released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority show 21,822 Black, African American, or African individuals are unhoused within the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, representing 31.8% of the unhoused population.

Black residents make up less than 10% of the county’s general population, yet represent nearly a third of its unhoused population—an overrepresentation rate of more than three to one.

By ethnicity, 32,592 people, or 47.5%, identify as Hispanic or Latino. Separately, among the racial groups reported by LAHSA, white residents account for 23.1% (15,864 people), multiracial residents 5%, Native Americans 1.7%, Asian Americans 1.4%, Pacific Islanders 0.7%, and Middle Eastern residents 0.3%. Overall, countywide homelessness saw a 1.2% increase, a change officials noted brought the total unhoused population to 73,040 in LA County and 45,194 in the City of Los Angeles.

For 41-year-old Jennifer Rosa, this reality has been her life for nearly two decades. According to Rosa, domestic violence in 2008 led to child protective services intervention. Unable to secure safe housing, she said she lost custody of her two youngest children and was separated from her two oldest, triggering severe depression, income loss, and homelessness.

“I don’t think anybody really knows what homelessness is, unless they really go through it,” Rosa said. “It’s pretty hard on the street, especially being a woman and alone. There’s a danger out there that we stay away from… I try to stay away from drugs, alcohol, and many things out there.”

Rosa currently lives in an LA County transitional housing facility, where she has stayed for six months. It marks her second transitional program and her fifth attempt to secure a permanent home. Her four previous attempts collapsed at the final stage due to sudden administrative or funding setbacks.

After losing her children—her two oldest were raised by her sister and her two youngest were adopted—Rosa turned to her emotional support dogs to stay grounded. She is now working to get approval for them to join her in housing.

“My dogs have been a lot of help,” Rosa said. “Having something to care for has been a lot… versus not having my four kids with me.”

A funding crisis stalled movement across the rehousing network. Reductions in Time Limited Subsidy funding, a program providing up to 24 months of rental assistance, forced a pause on new enrollments and reduced total move-ins by 3,718 in 2025.

The subsidy freeze slowed exits from emergency shelters. Movement from interim shelter into permanent housing dropped 36%, falling from 12,120 to 7,770 people. With shelter beds backed up, street-to-shelter placements dropped 8%, while movement from shelters directly back to the street rose 24%.

LAHSA cited the system bottleneck in its official report, stating, “The 2026 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count confirms a fundamental truth: Access to housing ends homelessness.”

Medical and policy experts pointed to the same core issue. Dr. Maria Raven, chief of emergency medicine and professor at UC San Francisco, said healthcare and social interventions cannot substitute for physical shelter.

“At the end of the day, if someone doesn’t have housing, it’s just very, very difficult to get things done,” Raven said. “A big problem with homelessness policy in California is it’s a very hard problem to solve unless you’re going to get people housed.”

The housing freeze coincided with a steady influx into the rehousing system. In 2025, 55,691 people accessed the system for the first time or for the first time in two years, accounting for 66% of everyone entering the network. LAHSA said 2.37 newly unhoused people entered the system for every person the system placed in permanent housing.

Economic hardship drove 59% of newly unhoused residents into homelessness, according to survey data. LA County faces a deficit of 473,000 affordable housing units, while average two-bedroom rents of $2,745 require an annual income of roughly $110,000. Other reported causes included weakened social networks at 38%, disabling health conditions at 23%, system discharge at 10%, and violence at 10%.

Regulatory barriers and local opposition continue to delay housing development across California, Raven noted.

“It’s very hard to build housing in California. There’s so many regulations; nobody wants it in their backyard,” Raven said. “You have a lot of people that are kind of speaking out of both sides of their mouth. They don’t want to see homelessness; they want the problem solved, but only if it doesn’t involve them being near it.”

Raven said high regulatory hurdles put California at a disadvantage compared to cities like Houston, where fewer development regulations have allowed for more aggressive housing placements. In California, developers must navigate environmental rules, landlord agreements, and neighborhood pushback.

To restore flow to the housing pipeline, LAHSA outlined several priority measures: securing permanent annual state HHAP funding for rental assistance, obtaining federal waivers to expand mental health treatment capacity, and increasing direct investments in homelessness prevention.

Despite bureaucratic delays, participants in the system emphasize the importance of remaining engaged. Receiving three meals a day, facility care, and access to an on-site health clinic, Rosa recently applied for permanent housing placement.

“A lot of people don’t believe that this actually works, but it does if you’re really willing,” Rosa said. “The help is there because it’s a matter of you reaching for it… There is hope as long as there is help.”