Unsheltered homelessness in Santa Monica dropped 18.1% in 2026, even as homelessness increased across most of the Los Angeles region, according to Point-in-Time Count data released Friday by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
Santa Monica's count found 718 people experiencing homelessness this year, down 94 people, or 11.6%, from 812 in 2025. It was the lowest total recorded since LAHSA began administering the city's count in 2024.
The decline was driven almost entirely by fewer people living outdoors. The count found 389 unsheltered individuals, down 86 from 475 last year. Sheltered residents rose slightly, from 202 to 222, an increase of 9.9%.
Vehicle dwelling, the main driver of Santa Monica's increase in last year's count, reversed sharply. Occupied vehicles — cars, vans and RVs — fell from 84 to 59, a drop of 29.8%. Vans alone fell from 52 to 34. Tents and makeshift shelters combined dropped from 51 to 48.
"Behind every one of these numbers is a person, and behind this progress is a community that refuses to treat homelessness as inevitable," Mayor Caroline Torosis said. "This is what happens when a city stays committed to keeping people housed. We're proud of this milestone, and we are not slowing down."
Aileen Reynolds, director of the city's Housing and Human Services Department, said the numbers reflect the work of the city's coordinated response system but cautioned against declaring victory.
"This decline reflects what a dedicated system of care can achieve when we meet people where they are and connect them to services right away," Reynolds said. "At the same time, we know our work is not done."
City officials and LAHSA caution that the figures are raw, unadjusted totals reflecting people and dwellings actually observed by volunteers and outreach teams the night of the count in January. They have not been adjusted with a multiplier to estimate additional people who may have been living inside a counted vehicle or structure, and the sheltered totals exclude people housed through vouchers, Inside Safe, Pathway Home or other programs with confidential addresses — meaning the true number of unhoused residents connected to city and county services is likely higher than the raw count shows.
The result marks a reversal from a year ago, when Santa Monica's 2025 count showed local homelessness rising 5%, from 774 people in 2024 to 812, driven largely by car campers and a rise in shelter residents, even as Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles both posted declines. This year, the pattern flipped: Santa Monica improved while the regional picture worsened. Santa Monica's broader service planning area, which includes Malibu, Culver City, Beverly Hills, Venice and several other Westside communities, saw an increase of 147 individuals.
Regional homelessness rises after two years of declines
LAHSA's 2026 Greater Los Angeles count found homelessness across the county's Continuum of Care rose 1.2% to an estimated 73,040 people, and rose 3.4% to about 45,194 people within the city of Los Angeles — reversing two consecutive years of declines. Unsheltered homelessness in the city of Los Angeles jumped 7.9%, to an estimated 29,115 people.
LAHSA said the increase was not driven by any single program's failure but by a funding-driven pause in enrollments and permanent housing placements through Time Limited Subsidies, a flexible rental assistance program. The number of people newly housed through the subsidies dropped from 10,308 in 2024 to 6,590 in 2025, contributing to a roughly 5,100-person decline in total permanent placements regionwide, to 23,532.
Without access to the subsidies, movement through the rehousing system slowed at every stage: transitions from interim to permanent housing fell 36%, movement from the street into interim housing fell 8%, and the number of people falling back onto the street from interim housing rose 24%. LAHSA said that bottleneck left fewer beds available for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness to fill.
"This year's count confirms a fundamental truth: access to permanent housing ends homelessness," said Gita O'Neill, LAHSA's interim chief executive officer. "When our unhoused neighbors lost access to rental subsidies, the system slowed, there was less upward movement in interim housing, and progress stalled."
LAHSA also pointed to broader economic pressure, noting a Los Angeles County household must earn $110,000 annually to afford average rent of $2,745 a month, and that the region lacks more than 473,000 affordable homes it needs. Of newly unhoused residents surveyed this year, 59% cited economic hardship as the primary cause.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass offered a different emphasis, attributing the reversal to federal policy under the Trump administration and to what she described as a 50% cut in state Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention funding, from $1 billion to $500 million, which she said cost the city of Los Angeles $70 million.
LAHSA said it is pursuing litigation, alongside lawsuits brought by the state of California and others, against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development over the funding framework adopted for its 2026 Continuum of Care Notice of Funding Availability, arguing the framework threatens to strip subsidies from thousands of households already in permanent housing.
Count methodology faces continued scrutiny
Both the regional and Santa Monica figures come with reliability caveats. A RAND Corporation study published in 2025 found LAHSA's volunteer-led count has significantly undercounted the region's unsheltered population in recent years, diverging sharply from RAND's more rigorous survey method starting in 2024. Last year's official count fell 32% short of RAND's tally, with the 2025 count capturing just 61% of Skid Row's unsheltered population, compared with 76% in Venice and 81% in Hollywood.
Because the count determines how federal homelessness funding and Los Angeles County's Measure A sales tax revenue are distributed, undercounts in high-need areas risk diverting resources from where they're needed most, RAND found. A subsequent HUD-mandated review of LAHSA's 2025 count found duplication and utilization errors, prompting revisions including an upward correction to the unsheltered estimate after reviewers discovered an outdated file had omitted data from the Winnetka area.
RAND's most recent report, covering data collected from January 2025 through this January in Hollywood, Skid Row and Venice, found the combined unsheltered population in those neighborhoods held roughly steady, but unsheltered rough sleeping without any tent, vehicle or makeshift structure reached its highest share in the study's four-year history — 44% of the unsheltered population in those areas, up from 30% in 2021. Researchers linked the shift, away from tents and toward vehicles and open-air sleeping, to encampment clearings that leave people without alternative housing.
LAHSA has faced broader scrutiny over its methodology and finances over the past year, including a 2025 forensic audit, the loss of roughly $350 million in annual funding from Los Angeles County, and the resignation of former CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum.
Beginning later this summer, Santa Monica will partner with RAND to conduct independent, bi-monthly counts of unsheltered homelessness in the city, paired with in-person surveys of unsheltered residents — an effort city officials said is meant to supplement the annual snapshot with more frequent, granular data.
City programs cited in decline
City officials credited several initiatives launched over the past year, anchored by the Homelessness Strategic Plan the City Council adopted in March 2025, which aligned city departments around four pillars: prevention, intervention, coordination and communication. The plan ties into the city's broader Realignment Plan objectives of achieving safe neighborhoods and clean streets and developing affordable housing.
Among the programs cited was SaMo Bridge, a 24/7 respite hub at Main Street and Pico Boulevard that opened in April 2025. Accessible only through Santa Monica Police Department referral, the hub is operated by longtime city partner Exodus Recovery in coordination with the City Attorney's Office, the Police Department and Housing and Human Services. Rather than arresting someone for a minor offense, officers can bring them to SaMo Bridge, where a resource navigator begins a 90-day care coordination plan.
In its first year, the program received 462 police referrals — exceeding its original design capacity of 260 annual referrals — and started 363 people on 90-day plans. Of 233 participants directly connected to services, 81% were immediately placed into housing or treatment programs, and 54 people graduated and became eligible for citation dismissal.
The city also pointed to expanded street outreach hours in partnership with the Salvation Army and The People Concern, growth of the Police Department's Homeless Liaison Program, continued Right to Counsel legal representation for tenants facing eviction, and the Project Homecoming initiative, which has reunited more than 3,200 people with family or support networks since 2006.
The Point-in-Time Count is a federally required, one-night snapshot conducted each January and administered regionwide by LAHSA using a consistent methodology. Officials describe it as a directional indicator rather than a census, and say year-over-year changes should be read alongside other local data.