While Californian officials boast about homelessness decreasing in the state, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said she thinks ICE raids could lead to an increase in people without homes.
New preliminary 2025 point-in-time reports showed that many local communities around California have experienced a decrease in homelessness. The Los Angeles area was one of them, making it the city’s second year in a row to have a decrease in homelessness.
Bass worries ICE raids in Los Angeles will reverse the progress the city has made to mitigate the homelessness crisis because deporting illegal immigrants means families will lose their income.
“I have talked to some of the people who lost their spouses, their spouses were detained, and they are not sure how they are going to make the rent,” Bass said during an interview July 30. “So we could have a whole new influx of homeless people because of policies like ICE.”
Bass said the reason why homelessness in the city of Los Angeles is going down is because she has taken a different approach to homelessness.
“Homelessness has gone down two years in a row because we chose to act with urgency and reject the broken status quo of leaving people on the streets until housing was built,” Bass said in a press release July 14. “These results aren’t just data points–they represent thousands of human beings who are now inside, and neighborhoods that are beginning to heal.”
