An audit of Los Angeles' anti-camping law shows that in three years since going into effect, just two unhoused people have been provided permanent housing while more than $3 million has been spent on implementation and enforcement, according to a city memo released on Friday. The policy, which is also known as 41.18 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code that it was created, was enacted into law on Sept. 3, 2021.
LAHSA says that 81% of the encampment sites were repopulated, but numbers of individual-level data shows that the average repopulation return across all encampments was 39%, which means that about 4 in 10 people returned to their encampment within two weeks. 'Our office estimates that the city spent approximately $3 million on ordinance implementation between September 2021 and December 2023,' said the city's Chief Legislative Analyst in the memo released Friday.