Los Angeles recruits up to 6K volunteers to count city's homeless population as crisis worsens

Los Angeles County is recruiting up to 6,000 volunteers to count homeless people around the city. The effort began Tuesday night and is expected to take three days, officials said.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority-led street tally helps the county government’s efforts to tackle a homeless crisis, which has crippled the city with tens of thousands of people living on the streets, living in cars, tents and makeshift street shelters. These temporary homes have proliferated on sidewalks and in parks and other community areas.

The so-called "point-in-time" count aims to estimate how many people are unhoused and what financial or medical services they may require for potential mental health conditions or from drug addiction.

This count comes as California residents have grown increasingly frustrated over lawmakers’ failure to deter the surging homeless population. Since 2015, homelessness has increased by 70% in Los Angeles County and 80% in the city.

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A homeless person sleeps covered with a blanket on cardboard in Los Angeles on Feb. 24, 2022 as volunteers participate on the third night of the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count. (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

In 2023, officials reported more than 75,500 people were homeless on any given night in LA County, a 9% rise from a year earlier, and about 46,200 within the city of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, kicked off the count Tuesday night in the North Hollywood neighborhood of LA’s San Fernando Valley.

Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian, right, joined by Kathryn Barger, left, representing the 5th supervisorial district of Los Angeles County and Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath, center, who represents the 3rd supervisorial district of Los Angeles County, walk on the street at the start of the annual homeless count in the North Hollywood section of Los Angeles Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

Mayor Karen Bass, who was sworn into office De. 11, 2022, used her first full day in office to declare a state of emergency over spiraling levels of homelessness in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

"Homelessness is an emergency, and it will take all of us working together to confront this emergency," Bass said in a statement, calling the count "an important tool to confront the homelessness crisis."

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Bass declared a state of emergency on homelessness on her first day in office in Dec. 2022.

She has announced that over 21,000 unhoused people were moved into leased hotels or other temporary shelter throughout 2023. The city has also cleared out street encampments and has additional housing projects planned, she said last month.

People walk past a homeless encampment near a Target store on Sept. 28, 2023 in Los Angeles. State and local lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, are seeking to overturn lower court decisions which currently block their power to clear encampments of unhoused people. Dozens of leaders, many from Western states including California, have turned to the Supreme Court to overturn the rulings. Skid Row is home to thousands of people who either live on the streets or in shelters. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A homeless encampment is seen along a roadside in Los Angeles on Dec. 6, 2022. Tens of thousands of people sleep rough on Los Angeles' streets, in an epidemic that shocks many visitors to one of the wealthiest urban areas on the planet. (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

The LA County homeless annual tally is mandated by the federal government for Los Angeles and other cities to qualify for certain federal funding.

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Its results are expected to be released in late spring or early summer.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.