Incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass gets fresh odds of holding on to her office with homelessness on the rise
Homelessness in Los Angeles rose 3.4 percent in 2025, adding new political pressure on first-term Mayor Karen Bass as she heads into a closely watched November runoff against L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman.
New homeless figures
According to the Los Angeles Times, the increase includes people staying in shelters, while the number of people living outdoors or in vehicles climbed 7.9 percent over the past year. The annual point-in-time count recorded 45,194 people experiencing homelessness across the city.
The new figures arrive as homelessness remains one of the defining issues in the mayoral race. Bass and Raman have made the crisis a central campaign issue, with Raman arguing that the city’s current strategy has fallen short.
Before the latest report, Bass had pointed to an overall decline in homelessness as evidence that her administration’s efforts were making progress. Following the release of the new numbers, however, she blamed federal and state policy decisions for driving more residents into homelessness.
Funding cuts
Bass said local efforts “ultimately couldn’t keep up with policies and funding cuts at the federal and state levels that pushed more people onto the streets.”
She cited policies enacted by President Donald Trump‘s administration that she said pushed “more families to the edge.” She also pointed to a 50 percent reduction in funding for California’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program and said Los Angeles County has not provided adequate services to address the crisis.
“This crisis was ignored by city leaders for decades, it’s only now that we’ve seen a historic decline. I will never stop fighting until we end street homelessness, because no Angeleno should be sleeping on the street,” Bass said.
‘Disappointing’ results
Raman said the latest figures underscore the need for a different approach.
In a statement to Newsweek, she called the results “disappointing, but not surprising.”
“Leadership at City Hall has not shown the willingness to shift toward an approach that actually moves people into permanent housing. And these results make clear that the mayor’s approach is not working well enough,” she said.
Bass and Raman advanced to the November runoff after neither candidate secured a majority in the June primary. Although the election is officially nonpartisan, both candidates are Democrats, with Raman widely viewed as the more progressive contender. Former reality television star Spencer Pratt, who ran as an independent, failed to advance.
The only publicly released head-to-head poll before the primary showed Raman leading Bass 32 percent to 28 percent, with one-quarter of voters backing neither candidate and 15 percent undecided. Still, prediction markets currently favor Bass, giving her roughly a two-thirds chance of winning reelection.