The overall number of people living on the streets in three high-profile Los Angeles neighborhoods held steady in 2025, but the way those people sleep has shifted in a troubling direction — with rough sleeping reaching its highest level in four years of monitoring, according to a new report from the RAND Corporation.
The findings come from RAND's Los Angeles Longitudinal Enumeration and Demographic Survey, known as LA LEADS, which tracked unsheltered homelessness in Hollywood, Skid Row and Venice from January 2025 through January 2026. The study concluded that the combined unsheltered population in those neighborhoods was statistically unchanged from a year earlier, but rough sleeping — defined as living completely without a tent, makeshift shelter or vehicle — rose 20%, adding roughly 250 people to that most-exposed category.
By January 2026, 44% of all unsheltered people in the study area were sleeping rough, up from 30% in 2021-22 when the study began.
"The total count held steady in 2025, but the makeup of the population continued to shift substantially," said Louis Abramson, the study's lead author and an adjunct researcher at RAND. "Compared to a year ago, more people are sleeping completely unsheltered, more spread out geographically, and with fewer connections to the systems that contributed to the prior year's progress."
A Shifting Population
Tent dwelling, long the most visible marker of street homelessness, continued a steep decline — falling 23% during 2025 and roughly half since the study began in 2021. But those reductions have been offset by growth in rough sleeping and vehicle dwelling, which rose 11% in 2025. For every four tents removed over the four-year study period, approximately three vehicles or rough sleepers were added on average each day, researchers found.
By January 2026, 87% of the tents still standing in the three study neighborhoods were located in Skid Row, up from 60% four years earlier — concentrating what remains of the encampment population in the county's most acute homelessness zone.
Skid Row was the only one of the three neighborhoods to show continuous population growth across the entire study, averaging increases of nearly 4% per year. On an average night in 2025, approximately 2,100 people were unsheltered there, compared to roughly 650 in Hollywood and 700 in Venice.
New survey data collected in 2025 suggest encampment clearings may be directly driving the rise in rough sleeping. Nearly half of rough sleepers surveyed reported losing a dwelling in the past year, and 46% of those said it was confiscated or towed by government officials or service providers.
"The continued increase in rough sleeping from 2024 to 2025 is concerning because our data show that this population can be harder to engage and often has greater clinical needs," said Sarah Hunter, a co-author and senior behavioral scientist at RAND. "It suggests encampment-based approaches may no longer be effective and that different strategies are needed."
What Is LA LEADS — and How It Differs From the Official Count
LA LEADS was launched in fall 2021 to address what RAND researchers identified as a critical gap in homelessness data. Unlike the federally mandated Point-in-Time count conducted annually by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, LA LEADS used trained professional field staff rather than volunteers, and conducted six enumerations per neighborhood per year — providing a much higher frequency snapshot of how the unsheltered population was changing month to month.
LAHSA's annual count relies on approximately 8,000 volunteers canvassing more than 3,000 census tracts over three January nights, using statistical multipliers to estimate total population from tent, vehicle and individual observations. LA LEADS employed standardized methods and consistent survey instruments to track not just numbers but demographics, health conditions, service access and housing history.
That methodological difference has produced starkly different results in recent years. A separate RAND study found that LAHSA's 2024 Point-in-Time count fell 26% short of LA LEADS totals in the three study neighborhoods — a gap that widened to 32% in 2025. The undercount was most severe in Skid Row, where the official count captured just 61% of the unsheltered population RAND identified. In Venice, the figure was 76%, and in Hollywood, 81%.
Researchers warned those inaccuracies carry direct financial consequences. LAHSA's Point-in-Time count directed $220 million in federal funds in 2024 and roughly $100 million in regional Measure A funds in 2025. An undercount in the neighborhoods with the highest need, researchers cautioned, risks diverting resources away from those who need them most.
Why the Count Matters — and Why It's Been Contested
The annual Point-in-Time count is more than a statistical exercise. Under federal law, the count determines how hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funding is allocated across the country. In Los Angeles, it has also become a politically charged barometer of whether elected officials are making progress on what polls consistently show is voters' top concern.
LAHSA has faced years of criticism over the reliability of its methodology. A 2017 Economic Roundtable report concluded the count was "not yet sufficiently accurate to identify year-to-year changes in homelessness." Volunteers have flagged app crashes and inadequate training — most notably in 2022, when a Venice census tract previously showing 509 unsheltered people was reported as zero. LAHSA's own associate director of data management later acknowledged in internal emails that the agency did not have a formal documented reconciliation process.
A March 2025 court-ordered forensic audit tracking $2.3 billion tied to three city homelessness programs concluded there was "nearly zero financial oversight or accountability" at LAHSA. On April 1, 2025, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 to pull the county's roughly $350 million in annual funding from the agency and create a new county Department of Homeless Services and Housing. LAHSA CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum resigned days later. The agency announced 284 layoffs and has since transitioned to a narrowed role focused on its database, Continuum of Care governance and the annual count.
The 2025 official count, conducted in mid-February following a postponement due to the Palisades and Altadena wildfires, reported 67,777 people experiencing homelessness countywide — a roughly 4% decline. Mayor Karen Bass cited the numbers as evidence her Inside Safe encampment resolution program was working. RAND's findings complicate that narrative, suggesting that while tent counts have fallen in Hollywood and Venice, the underlying unsheltered population has not meaningfully declined and is becoming harder to serve.
What Comes Next
RAND researchers say the findings call for a fundamental shift in strategy. With tent dwellers now representing a small fraction of the unsheltered population outside Skid Row, programs designed around encampment resolution have diminishing targets and diminishing returns.
The report recommends that city and county agencies pivot toward low-barrier permanent supportive housing with integrated behavioral health services, expand rapid rehousing and employment supports in areas like Venice with younger and more transient populations, and develop centralized service hubs where outreach workers can bring clients rather than delivering services on dispersed street locations.
Researchers also urged enforcement and sanitation agencies to base encampment clearings on the actual availability of alternative shelter beds — warning that clearing encampments without offering viable housing options is likely producing more rough sleepers, not fewer.
"After four years of conducting this count, the unsheltered population today looks different from the population these strategies were built to serve," Abramson said. "Successfully addressing current conditions means rethinking how we engage unsheltered people, bring them indoors, and support them once they are there."
LA LEADS was the largest ongoing professional count of unsheltered people in Los Angeles outside LAHSA's annual tally. The study was supported by the Lowy Family and conducted by the RAND Housing Center, based in Santa Monica.