Homelessness in L.A.: Evidence from temporary shelter

Key takeaways

• Homelessness in the U.S. is at an all-time high, with more than a third of the country’s unhoused individuals lacking shelter.
• There is an ongoing policy debate around the optimal use of funds for homeless services, fueled by a limited understanding of the effects of different interventions.
• New evidence from a Los Angeles County temporary shelter [1] program finds large social returns locally and regionally. These include reductions in local crime and ER visits for psychiatric conditions.
• Temporary shelter is not a permanent solution, but it remains a cost-effective and evidence-based tool as cities overall face tighter budgets and growing street homelessness.

in the United States, according to the latest estimates from 2024, homelessness is at an all-time high with more than 770,000 people experiencing homelessness on any given night — a population that is greater than Denver or Washington D.C. More than one third of this population lives without shelter. Homelessness increasingly affects a wide array of communities, and in recent years, most states have seen rapid growth in homelessness. States that haven’t traditionally been seen as having a homeless problem — Oklahoma, Idaho and Kentucky, for example — are experiencing faster increases in homelessness than in states like California, Washington and Oregon.

However, the issue has remained particularly intractable in California, which continues to account for 24 percent of U.S. homelessness and 45 percent of unsheltered homelessness, respectively.

The impacts and visibility of homelessness are perhaps amplified in California because, unlike New York where more than 95 percent of the homeless population has shelter, more than 65 percent of homeless Californians are unsheltered. In other words, a person experiencing homelessness in California is nearly twice as likely to be unsheltered than the national average. Statewide, more than 123,000 people are estimated to be unsheltered, with the largest concentration in Los Angeles County, where roughly 52,000 people live outdoors as of January 2024.

FIGURE 1. U.S. homeless population, 2009-2024

Note: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, only partial counts were conducted in 2021.

FIGURE 2. States with highest and lowest unsheltered shares (2024)

Nationally, the unsheltered homeless population skews older (nearly a quarter are more than 55 years old), more male (70 percent), and white (47 percent) than the sheltered homeless population. More than 150,000 of the 770,000 homeless in the U.S. are experiencing chronic homelessness. Chronic homelessness is officially defined as having a disability and having continuously experienced homelessness for at least a year; or, having experienced at least four episodes of homelessness in the last three years for a total of at least 12 months.

Despite extensive research by economists and other social scientists on housing subsidies, public housing and eviction prevention, homelessness itself remains strikingly understudied. Rigorous causal evidence on downstream interventions — like the provision of emergency, or temporary shelter — is scarce because people experiencing homelessness are often excluded from traditional surveys and administrative data.

There’s a vital need for empirical evidence on the effectiveness of emergency shelter as policymakers grapple with how best to design and implement effective policies for reducing homelessness. Nationwide, every day, the country operates more than half a million shelter beds, and local leaders continue to announce plans to build more. But in the policy debate over how best to address the homelessness crisis, opponents of investments in temporary shelter argue that the money is better spent on permanent housing solutions.

This policy brief summarizes new research providing some of the first evidence into the impacts of emergency shelter. By leveraging detailed administrative records from L.A. County, the study identifies causal effects of shelter on community outcomes such as crime and emergency health care use. In doing so, it sheds important light on the costs and benefits of investing government resources in emergency shelter.

Is homeless shelter a worthwhile investment?

One of the largest public investments in homelessness response has been to provide temporary shelter with the assumption that once people are in some kind of shelter, it will be easier to connect them to services provided by government agencies and nonprofits and limit their return to the streets. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass’ banner effort, Inside Safe, launched in December 2022 and has been pitched as “a bold city-wide, voluntary, proactive housing-led strategy to bring people inside from tents and encampments, and to prevent encampments from returning.”[2] In FY2024-25, the City of Los Angeles spent approximately $29 million on this program.[3] As the city faces historic deficits, policymakers must contend with fewer resources to address persistent homelessness challenges.

To date, however, there is limited policy-relevant research assessing the effects of government interventions, like Inside Safe, to reduce homelessness or assist those experiencing it. Among the unanswered questions: What is the consequence of widespread unsheltered homelessness, and what can policymakers — in California and elsewhere — expect to see if they choose to expand the supply of homeless shelter? In our 2025 working paper, published through the National Bureau of Economic Research, we provide some of the first answers to these questions. The conclusion is that answers to these questions are complicated and nuanced. While temporary shelter proves to be highly effective in reducing the short-term consequences of homelessness (lessening burdens on health and criminal justice systems), entering temporary shelter does not appear to ensure lasting housing outcomes.

Summary of the study

Despite recent declines in homelessness, L.A. County accounts for about 10 percent of the nation’s total homelessness and 19 percent of unsheltered homelessness (more than all the other top 10 localities by homelessness combined). Given that L.A. County accounts for about 3 percent of the entire U.S. population, the number of homeless individuals per capita in L.A. County is more than three times as high as in the rest of the U.S. The number of unsheltered homeless per capita is more than six times greater in Los Angeles than it is nationally.

TABLE 1. U.S. homelessness in 2024 (Total: 771,480)

Like many jurisdictions, L.A. County temporarily expands its shelter program each winter. This means that every year during our 6-year study period (January 2014 through December 2019), an additional 1,000 to 1,500 shelter beds became available in different locations and on different dates, allowing us to compare how outcomes change when shelter suddenly opens (or closes). These winter shelters add to the existing stock of shelter as shown in Figure 4 below.

FIGURE 3. L.A. County emergency shelter daily bed counts (2014-2019)

Note: Beds offered by the winter shelter expansions are in blue and beds operating year-round are in gray. Each year, on specific dates, homeless shelter expands (or contracts) significantly.

Through our partnership with the University of Southern California’s Homelessness Policy Research Institute and the University of California’s California Policy Lab, we acquired detailed administrative data on homeless services from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) to construct a daily panel of shelter capacity and utilization. We paired this with public crime incident data from the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, as well as administrative data on all emerFigure 2gency room visits across all California-licensed hospitals and ERs from the California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI).

Figure 4. Snapshot of L.A. County homelessness

Note: Our study compares shelter opening and closing across these different geographies and time.

L.A. County covers 88 cities, has a population of nearly 10 million (and is therefore more populous than all but 10 states in the U.S.), and spans an area about half the size of Vermont. Due to its size, administration of homeless services is divided into eight “Service Planning Areas” (SPAs).

Each of these SPAs are comparable in population to major U.S. cities. Our methodology, described in detail in the working paper, makes use of the fact that shelters open and close on different dates depending on year and location. This allows us to compare changes in outcomes in areas where shelter expands (before/after the expansion date) against changes in these same outcomes in areas (or years) where no such expansion occurs. For example, does crime in a particular area decline or increase differentially after winter shelters open up relative to other areas where there is no such change? Similarly, is the change larger in areas where more shelter beds are made available relative to areas with fewer beds?

Our results show that, on average, when one SPA opens 100 additional shelter beds, the number of people who are unsheltered falls by 90 and daily crime incidents fall by one. For every additional 400 shelter beds, we observe one less daily emergency room visit for psychiatric conditions, which are by far the most common condition among homeless individuals treated in ERs.

The findings mean that, had these winter shelter beds not been available during the 3-4 months of operation each year, Los Angeles would have seen approximately 1,500 additional crimes and more than 300 additional psychiatric ER visits. Moreover, we find that the crime reduction is concentrated in the zip codes that are closest to the shelters. This is especially striking since communities often oppose having a homeless shelter open or expand given concerns about public safety. Our results suggest that shelters make nearby communities safer and that crime reductions occur at night when shelters are open, but not during the day when they are closed.

The final piece of our analysis follows more than 170,000 unique individuals seeking homeless services between 2014 and 2019. We compare the outcomes of those who receive shelter against observably similar individuals who receive only non-shelter (street) services.

As the figure below illustrates, on dates when the number of shelter beds increases, the share of people entering homeless services who receive shelter (black line) spikes. However, the share of people entering homeless services who are still (or again) homeless 6-18 months later (red line) does not significantly change.

Figure 5. Share entering shelter and share returning to homeless services

While our findings provide little evidence to suggest that spending time in temporary shelter increases the exit rate from homelessness, we do find evidence that this intervention reduces mortality among the homeless. This result takes on additional significance when one considers that people experiencing homelessness have substantially higher mortality rates than the general population. In their forthcoming paper,[4] Meyer, Wyse and Logani estimate — after controlling for age, gender and other background characteristics — that homeless individuals are 3.5 times more likely to die than are housed individuals.

Policy implications

Taken together, our results demonstrate that temporary shelter has a positive impact both for individuals who are experiencing homelessness and the neighboring communities. As Figure 2 above shows, the fraction of homeless individuals who are unsheltered varies substantially across states, with California the highest. Given the much greater cost of permanent supportive housing and related interventions along with the increasingly tight budget constraints of state and local governments, further expansions of shelter capacity in areas with stubbornly high rates of homelessness seem warranted.

Of course, every locality is different. Future research must address the possibility that the benefits of shelter might diminish as more of the population becomes sheltered. For instance, in New York City, where shelter is already more available, the effects of additional shelter may not be comparable to those observed in L.A. However, outside of New York state, roughly half of homelessness occurs in areas where most of the homeless population is unsheltered. In these settings, our findings may be most immediately relevant.

Most cities across the country lack the beds necessary to provide shelter for all those experiencing homelessness in their communities. Given this reality, our findings provide crucial insights into what further investment in temporary emergency shelter can or cannot be expected to achieve. If 100 additional shelter beds can prevent 365 crime incidents and 90 ER visits per year, perhaps shelter is an effective public health and public safety intervention. But if those same 100 additional shelter beds will not increase the exit rate from homelessness, then it seems policymakers should look to other solutions to achieve sustained reductions in overall homelessness.

Armed with this knowledge, policymakers should clarify their objectives when it comes to homelessness. If the sole objective is to reduce homelessness, policymakers should consider solutions other than shelter. But if the goal is to improve the health and safety of people experiencing homelessness and their communities, expanding shelter capacity is among the most cost-effective and evidence-based strategies available, especially in regions where unsheltered homelessness is widespread.

Tackling homelessness requires a range of policy interventions, and continued investment in expanded temporary shelter improves the wellbeing of unsheltered homeless individuals and their surrounding communities. However, temporary shelter is not a silver bullet for reducing the overall level of homelessness. Policymakers should consider how to increase transitions from temporary shelter to longer-term housing through, for example, increasing housing supply and reducing barriers to construction.

Footnote

[1] “Shelter” refers to sites that meet the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s definition of emergency shelter.

[2] About Inside Safe, City of Los Angeles website.

[3] “L.A. City Council limits money going to Bass’ Inside Safe program,” FoxLA.com, April 2, 2025.

[4] Forthcoming in The Review of Economics and Statistics: “Life and Death at the Margins of Society: The Mortality of the U.S. Homeless Population,” published as a NBER working paper in 2023.