Near the very end of the report for the most recent Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, there’s a statistic that hasn’t gotten much media attention, but is extremely alarming: homelessness among adults aged 55 or older spiked by 13.5 percent between 2025 and 2026. They are someone’s grandparent, parent, aunt, or uncle, and they are living on the street. It’s unacceptable – but something can be done about it, and Karen Bass and Nithya Raman, who are battling each other in L.A.’s mayoral race, will want to take note.
Different reasons will be rolled out to explain the jump, but eight years ago, in 2018, UCLA released a fact sheet that found more than three-quarters of California’s low-income seniors are financially burdened by rent.
“Older Californians with limited income struggle to pay for shelter, food, medical care, and basic necessities,” said D. Imelda Padilla-Frausto, the co-author of the fact sheet. “Escalating rent prices can push them out the door.”
Sky-high rents, in other words, can force seniors into homelessness.
Five years later, in 2023, that fact sheet was backed up by a wide-ranging study on homelessness in California by UC San Francisco, which found that the overriding reason people end up on the streets is unaffordable rents.
“People are homeless because their rent is too high. And their options are too few. And they have no cushion,” Dr. Margot Kushel, the lead investigator of the study, told the Associated Press. “And it really makes you wonder how different things would look if we could solve that underlying problem.”
Are you listening Bass, Raman, and state leaders in Sacramento?
Clearly, the Los Angeles area, and California in general, needs more housing for poor and moderate- and lower-income people, especially seniors – many of whom live on fixed incomes.
Rent control can bring immediate relief to seniors, stabilizing a person’s rent burden. But the L.A. area and California need to urgently build more affordable and homeless housing – and the state’s own numbers don’t lie.
The California Department of Housing and Community Development operates a Regional Housing Needs Allocation program in which the state determines how much new housing at various affordability levels is needed in each region, such as Southern California and Northern California, between a period of years.
Here’s the shocking part.
Within the next several years, according to the state, 642,151 very-low-income units should be built, but only 5.3 percent have been constructed so far. In addition, 384,113 low-income units should be built, but only 14.9 percent have been constructed, and 419,977 moderate-income units should be built, but only 10 percent have been constructed.
In Los Angeles, the numbers are also disturbing.
The RHNA goals for L.A. between 2021 and 2029 is 115,978 extremely-low-income and very-low-income units; 68,743 low-income units; and 75,091 moderate-income units. Los Angeles City Planning, though, doesn’t expect to hit those numbers.
According to a city report, L.A. may only build 33,000 extremely-low-income and very-low-income units out of the goal of 115,978; 29,000 low income out of 68,743; and 10,000 moderate income out of 75,091.
The city, though, believes the construction of above-moderate-income housing will far exceed the RHNA goal of 196,831: 247,000 luxury units will be built in L.A.
In addition to the predatory business practices of the real estate industry, which will be reined by rent control and other tenant protections, there’s also a serious bureaucratic problem that’s holding back the construction of moderate- and lower-income housing: government red tape during the approval and permitting process.
The California Department of Housing and Community Development states on its website that “processing and permit procedures can post a considerable constraint to the production and improvement of housing. Common constraints include lengthy processing time, unclear permitting procedures, layered reviews, multiple discretionary review requirements, and costly conditions of approval. These constraints increase the final cost of housing, uncertainty in the development of the project, and overall financial risk assumed by the developer.”
The Southern California Association of Governments noted in a report that “speeding up approvals and permit processing… can expedite the production of housing in a community, and can incentivize infill development and affordable housing.”
In Los Angeles, city departments can at least talk to each other during the approval and permitting process, which would help move along a project. Right now, it’s widely known that there’s very little communication between departments to approve and then permit an affordable development. (Read “Will Los Angeles Politicians Fix City Hall’s Bizarro Bureaucracy and Save Lives?”)
This year, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the parent organization of Housing Is A Human Right, sponsored a bill called AB 1997, introduced by Assemblymember Alex Lee, to dramatically decrease the time period that local governments must give permits to lower-income-housing developers. Instead of taking forever, municipalities have 30 days to give permits for the construction of very-low-income and extremely-low-income units.
It’s that kind of condensed timeline that can help to quickly build affordable housing for seniors on fixed incomes – grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles – and keep them off the streets. The L.A. area will likely see a reversal of the homeless spike among seniors, but state and local politicians, such as Karen Bass and Nithya Raman, need to act now.
Patrick Range McDonald is a veteran investigative journalist and the award-winning advocacy journalist for Housing Is A Human Right.