Santa Monica's homeless population has held relatively steady for a decade but it remains heavily concentrated downtown, where it has more impact on businesses and visitors, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
The report, "Santa Monica's Recent Economic and Social Trends: A Case Study with Regional Comparisons," found that homelessness in the city has been stable since 2017, both overall and among people living unsheltered. The highest count in that period came in 2019, before the pandemic, at 1,026 people. Counts rose again from 2020 to 2023. The lowest came in 2026, at 793, though the 2026 data are preliminary, the authors wrote.
RAND's totals come from its own analysis of Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority data and differ from LAHSA's published count. The researchers counted each tent, vehicle and makeshift shelter as 1.7 people, roughly the average weight LAHSA has used in recent years.
The researchers also found homelessness is not new to Santa Monica. A 2006 city-funded Urban Institute report estimated the city hosted 2,000 of the roughly 66,000 people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County, suggesting a meaningful decline over two decades, though counting methods may have changed.
While the numbers have remained relatively steady, the city's homeless population is consistently concentrated in a single census tract covering downtown, RAND found, and that tract drives much of the change in citywide counts.
However, other tracts together contain more homeless people than downtown, while areas near the airport and toward Brentwood have essentially none. Among comparison areas, only Venice had similar levels. Culver City, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood counted far fewer people, and Culver City's increase from 2020 to 2022 has faded.
The authors concluded that business concerns may have more to do with the severity of individuals' problems than with their numbers. Business owners pointed to unsheltered people with serious mental illness or untreated substance use disorders and the frustration of dealing with serial offenders who were not handled by public safety services. Every private-sector interviewee who was asked ranked disorder and crime tied to homelessness as the top problem downtown.
RAND said it is unlikely those perceptions are "entirely imagined." Although it lacked data to measure acuity, the report said problem behavior may have worsened even as numbers held steady or fell. Separate RAND research in Los Angeles found acuity stayed constant as unsheltered numbers declined.
The report cited several pandemic-era factors: a more permissive tent policy adopted over virus concerns, the Metro E Line's "end of the line" policy at its Santa Monica terminus and encampment policies used extensively in neighboring Venice. Officials in Beverly Hills and Culver City told researchers their cities are more inclined to move homeless people out of commercial districts, which they acknowledged simply shifts the problem. RAND said it could not verify that. Local interviewees also cited county decisions on siting facilities and harm reduction, over which the city has little control.
Researchers Jason M. Ward, Roland Neil and Lizhong Liu analyzed LAHSA point-in-time counts at the census tract level from 2017 to 2026, excluding the canceled 2021 count, and compared Santa Monica with Venice, Culver City, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. They interviewed 14 of 19 people invited, including city staff, elected officials, business owners and development professionals, between March and August 2026. The authors note that the study did not include people with lived experience of homelessness or police representatives, relies on an annual count subject to measurement error and cannot establish causation.
LAHSA's own 2026 count found 718 people experiencing homelessness in Santa Monica, down 11.6% from 812 in 2025 and the lowest since LAHSA took over the count. Unsheltered homelessness fell 18.7%. Over the same year, homelessness rose 3.4% to 45,194 in the city of Los Angeles and 1.2% to 73,040 countywide. Culver City's raw count fell from 105 to 74, and Beverly Hills' unsheltered count rose from 17 to 30, according to LAHSA.
Santa Monica has ended its contract with LAHSA or counts and will now pay for a monthly count administered by RAND.
A separate RAND report released in October 2025 found LAHSA's count was 26% too low in 2024 and 32% too low in 2025 in Hollywood, Venice and Skid Row.
City policy has shifted sharply in recent years. The council declared a local emergency in February 2023 and has alternated between counting sleeping bags and bedrolls as evidence of illegal camping and allowing them. This year, the council voted to close the SaMoShel shelter, run by The People Concern, and build a city-controlled "Housing Focused System of Care." The SaMo Bridge diversion hub, funded by a nearly $8 million state grant, was designed to serve about 260 people a year but logged 462 referrals in its first year,
The city publishes no current total of homelessness spending across departments. The last one, a Moss Adams LLP audit of fiscal 2020-21, found $42.5 million a year, including $25.4 million in public safety costs. SMPD has historically reported about 70 of its arrests involve homeless victims or suspects.
The issue weighs on the city's reputation. In a 2025 visitor survey 19.2% of repeat visitors said the city had gotten worse, and 60.8% of those cited homelessness.
RAND recommended more frequent and detailed measurement of homelessness, including public-facing key performance indicators, noting that existing data give "only a minimal portrait" once a year. Because homelessness and crime are concentrated downtown, the authors said proactively engaging high-risk people there is likely a resource-efficient way to improve safety and reduce disorder, pointing to the new police substation at Santa Monica Place and the Homeless Liaison Program as steps in that direction.
The authors also urged the city to consider restarting its Homeless Community Court, which began in 2007 and ran for more than a decade. The voluntary court used progressive plea bargaining and flexible, non-carceral sentences to steer participants with the most severe mental health needs into treatment and reduce repeat offenses. Research and interviews point to a small number of people who use an outsized share of public services and criminal justice resources, the report said, and a similar county program now operates in Los Angeles.