LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass today housed more than 30 Angelenos living in a shocking and notorious encampment in Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley through her Inside Safe program. The previously entrenched encampment was the site of violence and dangerous fires in recent years and is now being safely cleared by City crews. Photos and b-roll will be available here.
“The cost of leaving people to live in these dangerous conditions is just too high: people die on the street each day, businesses lose customers, children cannot safely walk to school, and accidental fires put everyone in danger,” said Mayor Bass. “We cannot accept Angelenos living on the street in dangerous conditions while permanent housing is being built. Today, Inside Safe helped more than 30 people come into safe housing from squalid tents – this is an important step forward on the road to stability. Through Inside Safe, street homelessness has declined two years in a row. We cannot allow people with misguided intentions that wish to keep people on the streets to halt this work, which saves lives and restores neighborhoods.”
On her first day in office, Mayor Bass declared a state of emergency to urgently get people off the streets. Her signature initiative Inside Safe has brought thousands of people inside and resolved more than 100 often entrenched and longstanding encampments in every council district in the city. By breaking with the status quo, Mayor Bass has spearheaded needed policy changes that are preventing people from being housed, is accelerating the building of more than 30,000 units of affordable housing, advanced innovating housing solutions through LA4LA and is keeping people from falling into homelessness in the first place through a research-proven anti-eviction program led by the Mayor’s Fund.
This year’s Point in Time Count results show:
Homelessness reported to have declined for two years in a row in L.A. for the first time.
Street homelessness reduced by 17.5% since Mayor Bass took office in December of 2022. This is the largest decrease over two years since the Point in Time Count began in 2005.
The number of makeshift shelters, tents, cars, vans and RVs declined for a second time in a row, down 13.5%.
Permanent housing placements in Los Angeles City are at an all-time high.
Mayor Bass’ progress to save lives and reduce homelessness is measurable and visible. Earlier this month, the RAND Corporation released its annual report showing a 49% decline in the number of people experiencing street homelessness in Hollywood from last year to the year prior, drawing a connection to the work of Mayor Bass’ Inside Safe program. The report also showed a decrease in Venice. Inside Safe has conducted more than a dozen operations in Hollywood and monitors all locations to continue bringing people inside from those sites. In 2024, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority released the results showing the first decrease in homelessness in Los Angeles City for the first time in years — bucking nationwide and statewide trends.