Study: LA’s Homelessness Program Displaced 5 People for Every One it Helped

UCLA researchers found that a Los Angeles program designed to help unhoused people is displacing five times more people than it connects with services.

As Ryan Kushner explains in Smart Cities Dive, the study from the Luskin Institute observed the Comprehensive Cleaning and Rapid Engagement (CARE+) initiative on 16 days between June and October 2025 and surveyed unhoused people. “Among 51 unhoused residents surveyed in the study, 37% estimated they’d been forced to relocate more than five times in the past 30 days, and five had been offered access to shelter, according to the report. Only one respondent said shelter was obtained, in the form of a hotel voucher.”

Researchers reported that “Rather than caring for unhoused persons, the program is being used to punish them, pushing them from one location to another and trashing their belongings, while rarely providing useful services to them.”

The study included three recommendations for improving the program: “ending disposal of personal property, focusing on assistance over removal and building more low-income and supportive housing.”

The study comes soon after a plan from the county instructed cities on methods for clearing homeless encampments near sports venues that will be used in the 2028 Olympics.