More than 14,500 homeless families in Los Angeles County who previously lived in subsidized permanent housing may be forced back to the streets or shelters next year, largely because of the loss of federal funding, local officials warn.
The projected displacements will offset a slight decrease in the local homeless population since 2023 and have nonprofits and local government officials scrambling to try to blunt the potential impact.
“This is not a normal moment and we cannot treat this as if it were a normal moment,” said Councilwoman Nithya Raman, chair of the Los Angeles City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee. “The entire homeless services system we have set up here is at risk of collapsing.”
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority estimates that more than 14,500 families are currently at risk of homelessness, but the agency has not disclosed how many people may be affected.
LAHSA said about 3,500 of those households are at risk, largely because of state funding cuts, and another 6,000 households could lose their homes because the federal emergency housing voucher program launched during the pandemic is set to expire next year, four years earlier than originally planned.
LAHSA said another 5,000 to 7,000 families may become homeless because their permanent housing rent is paid for by a separate federal program called the Continuum of Care.
Last month, the Trump administration announced significant cuts to the amount of money the program allocates to permanent housing, shifting funds to temporary housing options that require people to enroll in services such as job training and mental health treatment.
It also puts more of the continuum of care funding up for bid, making it harder for places to get funding if they don’t adhere to the policies the government wants to see, such as enforcing camping bans.
Last week, more than 15 states, including California, filed a lawsuit to block the policy change.
If the lawsuit fails and the cuts go through, LAHSA and nonprofit service providers say they expect many people will become homeless again because they can’t simply use additional transitional housing funds and turn those people’s permanent apartments into temporary apartments.
Permanent housing projects are often built using other government funding sources, including state and local funds, which prohibits the conversion of permanent housing to transitional housing. Additionally, someone must be homeless to move into transitional housing, so people first have to lose their permanent housing to qualify, LAHSA said.
“I can’t imagine a universe in which we don’t see people homeless and where we don’t see our streets filled with people who are housed today,” said Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, president of LA Family Housing, a nonprofit that operates permanent housing and shelters.
LAHSA said a total of at least $323 million is needed to replace all projected lost funds and provide housing for 14,500 families.
In response to the combined cuts, the Los Angeles City Council recently ordered city staff to work with the county to ensure funds held by both governments are used effectively to limit the potential for budget cuts to force people onto the streets. The committee also asked staff to develop a plan to lobby federal and state officials to “limit potential funding cuts.”
Getting more money can be difficult. A Republican-controlled Congress has sought to shrink the size of government, and state and local governments have faced their own fiscal challenges, forcing them to make cuts in recent years to balance their budgets, including on programs targeting the homeless.
“I don’t think in all my years of working in homeless services I’ve experienced such a severe shortage at every level,” LAHSA Board Chair Amber Sheikh said.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said it was “absolutely impossible” the county would recoup all the lost funds, but it might be possible to house a small number of at-risk people by moving them into different programs managed by the county.
But Horvath said that in order to “have a clear plan,” county officials first need more clarity from the federal government on its new funding requirements and “the tools that I will have and will no longer have.”
Horwath said if thousands of people are forced back onto the streets, it could undermine people’s trust in government help and make it harder for them to get off the streets again.
It could also undermine the trust of the broader voting population in Los Angeles County, which last November approved Measure A, a half-cent tax to combat homelessness, which was added to the 25-cent tax known as Measure H.
Although Measure A raised more money than its predecessor, the county proposed cutting homeless outreach programs next fiscal year.
Officials say that’s necessary because much of the additional tax increase goes to newly created county agencies to build affordable housing, which takes time, while the percentage of sales taxes going to the county’s core homeless services remains essentially unchanged, leaving less money available for those services as the economy slows and consumer spending decreases.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement that despite the “attacks from Washington, D.C.” and the county’s fiscal situation, “Los Angeles will not choose to go backwards,” and she pledged to continue efforts to get people off the streets and provide them with housing.
Raman said one potential way to ease the pain of federal cuts remains Measure A. In addition to her seat on the Los Angeles City Council, she serves on the board of directors of the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency, a new county agency that received much of the additional revenue from Measure A.
Under the ballot measure, while most of the funds LACAHSA receives must be used to build new affordable housing, some of it could be used for homelessness prevention projects.
Raman said she was looking into whether the funds could be used to house at least some of the 14,500 at-risk families, something other officials said they were also considering.
“We have to get creative to deal with this time of crisis,” Raman said.
