The Homeless Crisis in Los Angeles Is Even Worse Than You Think

A new report out of California suggests that Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis may be even worse than it appears. According to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, nearly 40 percent of the city’s homeless population is not from California, and around six percent are not even from the United States.

EXCLUSIVE: We replicated a RAND Corporation survey and discovered that more than half of L.A.’s street homeless are not from L.A. Nearly 40 percent were from out of state, and 6 percent were from other countries, including Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea.https://t.co/f4CPpKOyI2

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) May 19, 2026

Mayor Karen Bass has turned Los Angeles into a magnet for the street homeless. The numbers are shocking:

• 64% are from outside the City of LA
• 40% are from outside California
• 6% are from outside the United States pic.twitter.com/4HHsSQM2Xw

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) May 19, 2026

From City Journal:

In 2020, the city-county Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) found that one-third of “unsheltered Angelenos” became homeless outside of Los Angeles County. In 2024, the nonprofit RAND Corporation reported that 41 percent of the street homeless surveyed across three Los Angeles neighborhoods—Hollywood, Venice, and Skid Row—were “last housed” somewhere other than L.A. County.

Both reports cut against the narrative of left-wing politicians and activists, who insist that any claim that out-of-town homeless are flooding L.A. is a “myth.” In 2021, LAHSA stopped publishing previous-location data. In 2025, RAND removed the metric from the organization’s annual report and included it in a separate, lesser-read “annex.”

We asked LAHSA and RAND why they buried this data. LAHSA said it stopped publishing previous-location figures because of respondents’ “varying interpretations of the question.” RAND claimed that it moved the data to the annex “due to a need to save costs on publishing,” and confirmed that the data would remain there in the group’s upcoming report.

So City Journal recreated the RAND’s 2024 study, and even used a slightly larger sample size to ensure accuracy. The results were a problem even worse than the study’s original data.

The results were astounding: 64 percent of the L.A. street homeless said they were from outside the City of Los Angeles, and 53 percent said they were from outside Los Angeles County—a significant increase compared with the LAHSA and RAND studies. Nearly 40 percent told us they were from other states, mostly from states that voted for President Trump in 2024. Six percent told us that they were from other countries, including Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea.

This comes as Los Angeles city officials have denied that the city’s homeless are coming from out of state, and have continued to downplay the severity of the crisis.

Editor’s Note: The American people overwhelmingly support President Trump’s law and order agenda.

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