Homelessness Rose 11% in Los Angeles, Officials Announce, While Pasadena’s Decline Continues

The number of homeless in the city of Los Angeles continued to rise during the past year, as Pasadena’s figures continued to go down.

Pasadena posted a 15.8 percent decrease in the number of homeless people, from 632 in 2015 to 532 this year, according to the latest count by Urban Initiatives presented to the Pasadena City Council Monday.

The city of Los Angeles, meanwhile, saw homelessness rise by 11 percent, while in Los Angeles County, homelessness increased by 5.7 percent. The figures for the city of LA and LA County were released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

The Authority counted 47,000 homeless in the county in 2016, up from 44,000 in 2015. Nearly two-thirds of the number – 28,000 – were in the city of Los Angeles, says the official report.

Los Angeles City Mayor Eric Garcetti said the city’s increase in homeless numbers could be due to a “historic” housing shortage, a mental health crisis and a jump in veterans landing in the streets, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

In Pasadena, this year’s report was coordinated by Urban Initiatives in partnership with the City of Pasadena, the city’s Housing Department, and the Pasadena Partnership, a collaborative funding and planning body that is committed to ending homeless in the city.

Since 2011, the Pasadena Partnership has been concentrating on a “Housing First” Policy, which according to the report is a “simple philosophy that offers permanent, affordable housing to homeless individuals and families.”  Case managers in the program help the homeless connect with community-based support systems with the goal of keeping them permanently housed.

The program is credited with helping the homelessness rate decline. According to the report, over 88 percent of program participants do not return to homelessness.

The Pasadena program also follows the 2010 Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, developed by the United States Interagency Council on homelessness.

The federal program has set goals in several areas of concern – ending  veteran homelessness by 2015, ending chronic homelessness by 2017, ending  family homelessness by 2020, and ending unaccompanied youth homelessness by 2020.

Based on that program’s goals, Pasadena has made significant progress in ending veteran homelessness, reducing the number from 89 to 44 since 2011. However, the report also said Pasadena would be unable to end the problem of “chronic homelessness” by 2017, since nearly half of the city’s homeless fall into that description.

Hence, the City will continue to use its Housing First policy to deal with that issue, the report said.