LA's been counting its homeless population for years — and today we're asking a pretty basic question: do those numbers actually say what politicians claim they say? This is Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily — I'm Matt, Hope's here too, and yeah, we're grading the homework: did progressive electeds deliver on their homelessness promises, or just the press release version? We're stress-testing the annual homeless count, watching a tiny home village go up in East Hollywood, and yes — the D Line extension finally gets a ribbon-cutting. And El Sereno neighbors are fighting affordable housing over parking. On a Friday. Okay, let's do it. Here's Phoenix Tso at LA Public Press:
Over the last two years, three progressive members of the Los Angeles City Council — all of whom are fighting for their political futures as they run campaigns in the June primaries — have overseen hundreds of CARE+ cleaning operations carried out in unhoused communities in their districts, a new LA Public Press analysis of city data finds.
LA Public Press crunched the city's own sanitation data and found that three of the council's most progressive members — Nithya Raman, Hugo Soto-Martinez, and Eunisses Hernandez — all saw CARE+ sweep operations rise in their districts from 2024 to 2025, helping drive a sixteen-percent increase citywide. And all three are running in June primaries. So, yeah, the question basically asks itself: did survival politics win out over principle? To be precise, CARE+ isn't a police sweep. It's a Bureau of Sanitation operation, but council offices control the scheduling based on their priorities — that's the word the sanitation spokesperson used. So these are discretionary calls. Discretionary calls that leave unhoused people scrambling for their stuff or watching it get trashed. Call it a cleaning operation if you want — the people at the Compound in Van Nuys know exactly how it felt. When the city or county says homelessness is up or down by a certain percentage, how solid is that number, really? And does it mean anything beyond the headline? It matters a lot, because real money and real policy move on that number. The annual point-in-time count is a single-night snapshot, with volunteers fanning out and physically tallying the people they can see — and that method has serious blind spots. RAND researchers publishing just last month found that official counts are increasingly underestimating people living on the street in three key L.A. neighborhoods, and they point to a specific culprit: the rise of rough sleepers — people without even a tent or vehicle — who are hardest to spot and count. Meanwhile, LAist's own analysis of the 2024 count found it was complicated by policy changes at LAHSA, shifting guidelines, and technical problems. Even LAHSA's finalized 2025 numbers got revised after release — the sheltered count was corrected by 141 people after a HUD review. None of that is minor, because the count feeds directly into funding formulas: LA County is now spending $843 million in a single fiscal year on its homelessness response, and that spending plan is explicitly built around count data. LAHSA's announcement put the headline numbers at overall homelessness down four percent and unsheltered homelessness down nine and a half percent — but if RAND is right that the count is undershooting rough sleepers, those wins may be softer than they look. If the count is this shaky, is there any independent check on it? Or are we basically just letting whoever does the counting grade their own homework? That's the accountability gap. The federal government normally puts out its own state-by-state report in December that could work as a cross-check, but as of this spring that report is five months delayed — which means California's numbers are going uncorroborated at the national level right now. LA County did move to create its own new homelessness department after an audit found LAHSA lacked transparency in tracking its spending, so there's at least some structural reform in motion. The question is whether that new county department builds in independent verification of the count methodology — because until the counting gets more rigorous, every homelessness-is-down announcement deserves a follow-up question about who's doing the math. MyNewsLA.com writes:
A housing developer and city officials Thursday celebrated the groundbreaking of a new tiny home village in East Hollywood that is expected to open 51 beds, of which 10 will be dedicated for youth. Located on Sierra Vista Avenue, the housing project received $33 million in grant funding from the state.
MyNewsLA has a groundbreaking in East Hollywood — 51 tiny home beds on Sierra Vista Avenue, ten of them reserved for youth, with thirty-three million dollars in state grant funding, and it's expected to open in early 2027. Fifty-one beds. The city has interim housing for about one-third of the people sleeping on the street. One-third. I'm glad the shovels are moving, but let's not pop champagne over a rounding error. Soto-Martinez called out the funding cuts at every level of government, which — fair. Thirty-three million in state grants to get fifty-one beds built is a brutal ratio, and he knows it. From Christina Gonzalez at FOX 11 Los Angeles:
An El Sereno community group is actively fighting a planned 100+ unit low-cost housing development, arguing that the developer is exploiting lenient city policies at the expense of the neighborhood. While the site was previously an abandoned lot used as a drug haven by squatters, residents are now demanding an immediate halt to the new project over a total lack of planned parking and initial unpermitted demolition.
El Sereno — working-class, transit-adjacent, and sitting on an abandoned drug lot nobody wanted until a developer showed up to build a hundred units of affordable housing. Now suddenly everybody's a zoning expert. To be fair, Matt, the developer did start demolition without permits. That's not a NIMBY complaint, that's a real process violation — and it gives opponents exactly the ammunition they need. Sure, fix the permit issue, fine the developer, move on. But the parking fight? El Sereno is right off the Gold Line. No parking is kind of the point. The CEO calling opponents a NIMBY group isn't exactly diplomacy — though if the shoe fits. A hundred low-income units on a former squatter lot is exactly the kind of project that shouldn't be dying on the vine over parking minimums. Beverly Press, with Tabor Brewster:
In a historic day for Los Angeles, Metro’s long-awaited D Line subway extension project opened the first three stops along Wilshire Boulevard on Friday, May 8, connecting the Miracle Mile and Beverly Hills to Downtown L.A. via rail for the first time. The first riders stepped on and off the trains shortly after noon at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega, often to applause from excited crowds of people waiting to board.
Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax, Wilshire/La Cienega — three new subway stops on the D Line, open as of May 8. Miracle Mile and Beverly Hills are finally connected to Downtown by rail for the first time. It took forever, cost a fortune, but it's here. Beverly Press broke this one, credit to Tabor Brewster. And yeah — Wilshire Boulevard finally getting subway service west of Western is a genuinely big deal for how people move across that corridor. KCRW DJs and purple-haired tourists from Florida doing the inaugural ride — look, I'll allow it. The party atmosphere is fine. What I care about is whether a busboy in Koreatown can get to a hotel job in Beverly Hills בלי a two-hour bus crawl. If this briefing helps you keep up with Los Angeles politics and urban life, consider subscribing and leaving a quick review wherever you're listening. It really helps other people find the show.
Links to all of today's stories are in the show notes, so if something deserves a closer look over the weekend, you can find the original reporting there.
That's Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily for this Friday, May 15th. This is a Lantern Podcast.