Long Beach’s unhoused population increased by 6.5% this year compared with last year, according to the results of the city’s annual homeless count.
In January, volunteers counted 3,595 people experiencing homelessness in Long Beach, compared with the 3,376 people counted in January 2024.
That’s an increase of 219 unhoused people.
City officials said Monday that most of that small spike is because a portion of the people counted — 167 — said they were displaced by the Los Angeles fires, which were still burning when the city conducted its count on Jan. 23.
Comments from the mayor
Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson acknowledged Monday that the numbers may have changed already, months after the disaster.
“There may have been folks in cars or in hotels or on our streets who were impacted in that moment by the fire. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily still displaced today,” he said at a roundtable event with other city leaders.
Long Beach’s unhoused population rose 6.5% last year, officials say; LA fires partly to blame
City authorities said the people who reported being displaced by the fires made up the majority of that 6.5% increase.
“If you were to take that out, we are seeing that our overall count is about a 1.5% increase,” said Paul Duncan, the city’s Homeless Services Bureau manager.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires municipalities to conduct homeless counts at the same time each year — usually in late January.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a regional agency known as LAHSA, conducts the count that covers the city of L.A. and much of the county. It excludes…
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