The 2026 Greater LA Homeless Count is underway as city, county rethinks roles and funding

Thousands of volunteers took to streets across Los Angeles County Tuesday night to begin the nation’s largest homeless count — an annual snapshot unfolding as the city and county reshape how they manage homelessness, amid growing tensions over accountability and funding.

The 2026 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, led by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), continues through Thursday across nearly all of L.A. County, excluding Long Beach, Glendale and Pasadena, who conduct their own counts. Required by the federal government, the point-in-time count helps determine how hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal funding are allocated for shelters, housing and services.

This year’s count comes as Los Angeles County formally launches a new homelessness department – a shift that moves major funding, staff and contracting authority away from LAHSA and marks a potential turning point in how the region coordinates its response.

The transition has exposed diverging paths for the city and county, raising new questions about accountability, data accuracy and whether the long-standing joint system can hold together amid deepening budget pressures.

That divide was reflected in who showed up, and who did not, at events surrounding the count.

At Tuesday night’s kickoff event at the Inner City Law Center in downtown L.A., Councilmember Nithya Raman, chair of the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, attended alongside LAHSA and nonprofit leaders. No county supervisors were present, though a senior advisor to Supervisor Hilda Solis delivered remarks.

Earlier that day, county officials unveiled the new homelessness department at a separate press conference. City elected officials were invited but none  attended.

Mayor Karen Bass, who was listed as a speaker at the evening kickoff, did not attend after running late from a prior meeting, a spokesperson from her office said Wednesday.

Raman said the city’s expanding role in the homeless response has been driven by gaps in the county’s system, even as responsibility for core services such as mental health, substance abuse treatment and social services, remains at the county level.

“The county is funded to provide those services, the city is not. We are not funded to do any of this work through state grants, except very recently,” Raman said. “I think gaps have been visible on our city streets, and the city has stepped up.”

She said the city has increasingly relied on general fund dollars to fill those shortfalls and has devoted significant effort to oversight and coordination, including around Measure A, to ensure city and county homelessness spending is aligned.

While emphasizing that cooperation remains essential, Raman acknowledged the relationship is being reassessed as the county launches its own department.

“I think that we will have to work through some of the challenges that we are facing in the gaps that exist between the city and county right now,” she said, “because there is no future to resolving homelessness without the city and county working in partnership.”

County leaders announced last year that they would pull hundreds of millions of dollars from LAHSA to seed a new, county-run homelessness department, citing audits that found deficiencies in LAHSA’s fiscal practices and delays in reimbursing service providers.

The audits, released by the county auditor-controller, criticized weak financial controls and oversight at the joint city-county agency. Supervisors said the findings demanded structural change.

LAHSA disputed many of the audit findings but said it was taking steps to improve transparency, data quality and financial oversight. Former CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum resigned in April, shortly after the county confirmed it would move most funding and staffing out of LAHSA.

Interim LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neill said at Tuesday’s kick off that the agency has taken steps to improve transparency and accountability, including reorganizing contracts, appointing a risk manager and creating an internal audit committee.

“We are really trying to be good stewards of people’s money, because we understand that’s what people get upset about,” she said.

Officials pointed to declines in homelessness in 2024 and 2025 as evidence the system had begun to show results. But O’Neill warned that progress is at risk as funding tightens at the federal, state and local levels.

She said time-limited rental subsidies–among the fastest ways to move people off the streets–-have already been paused, with nearly 60% expected to disappear by the end of the fiscal year. Federal emergency housing vouchers are also set to expire, and state homelessness funding has been delayed or cut.

O’Neill added that Los Angeles County is staring down a nearly $300 million funding gap, compounding pressure on the region’s homelessness response.

“When proven solutions lose funding, homelessness doesn’t stay flat– it may rise,” O’Neill said.

Against that backdrop, volunteers spent the night driving assigned routes, logging observations into a mobile app provided by LAHSA. They counted people living in cars, RVs, tents and makeshift shelters, noting estimated age ranges and living situations.

Melody Wilson, a second-year law student at Loyola Marymount University, said she volunteered in part because of her belief that homelessness is often shaped by circumstances, not choice.

“I’m just of the belief that you don’t make anyone’s life difficult, that’s already difficult,” she said. “Everyone is one step from a bad decision, so I don’t believe in mistreating anyone because of past decisions that they’ve made.”

Wilson, who previously interned with Inner City Law Center’s homelessness prevention team, said much of her legal work has focused on helping people clear criminal records that can prevent them from securing housing. She said she hopes the count will help guide resources to people who need support.

She was joined by her roommate, Lauren Goode, a first-year law student at the University of Southern California, and Goode’s boyfriend, Matthew Conry.

The group spent several hours canvassing an assigned portion of downtown Los Angeles, following a mapped route through streets and industrial blocks, relying on visual observations and occasionally stopping to offer water or blankets to people they encountered.

Goode said the experience reflected both the value — and the limits — of the count.

“It’s not always going to be exact, but we can only measure progress by looking back historically and seeing how we’re doing,” Goode said. She added that the goal is to give communities better information about where housing and services are most needed.

At a deployment site in the San Fernando Valley, Ivet Samvelyan, vice president of mission and impact at Hope the Mission, said the count remains essential for providers that rely on federal funding formulas.

She said recent declines reflect years of coordinated work — but warned that cuts now threaten to undo that progress.

“ We need to be able to have the sustainable funding,” she said. “If there’s no funding, that’s going to be a big challenge for us.”

The results of the unsheltered count are expected in late spring or early summer.