In all matters social, cultural, and economic, incentives matter. People will do what, as they see it, gets them something they want: A better job, a bigger house, a lower tax rate, lower gas prices. And other people will do what gets them what they want: Squishy, permissive local laws on homeless encampments and all of the drugs and crime that go with that. That's Human Nature 101; it always has been, and it always will be.
Here's the problem: A lot of our nation's major city governments seem not to have taken Human Nature 101. Despite a fundamental misunderstanding of the homelessness problem, they see it as primarily a housing issue, and remain squishy on enforcement. They hand out free needles, provide safe spaces for shooting up, and when a homeless person is arrested, they are all too often back in the street within hours. This allows the massive homeless encampments to fester, the drugs to flow, and the crime to spike. Meanwhile, they throw money at non-solutions while continuing policies that just attract more homeless people, many addicts, and many criminals.
Case in point: Los Angeles. A recent study has shown that as many as two-thirds of LA's homeless population came there from somewhere else, drawn by the city's permissive policies. A recent City Journal piece by authors Christopher F. Rufo and Kenneth Schrupp has details.
Los Angeles hosts the nation’s largest unsheltered homeless population. In recent years, despite billions in city and county spending, L.A.’s once-pristine streets have become littered with tents, drugs, and feces. City leaders have made elaborate promises about managing the homeless problem, but few seem to have asked a simple question: Where, exactly, are these people coming from?
There is a reason for that. In 2020, the city-county Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) found that one-third of “unsheltered Angelenos” became homeless outside of Los Angeles County. In 2024, the nonprofit RAND Corporation reported that 41 percent of the street homeless surveyed across three Los Angeles neighborhoods—Hollywood, Venice, and Skid Row—were “last housed” somewhere other than L.A. County.
They are coming from elsewhere because they see some advantage in being in Los Angeles. And these people, mind you, aren't exactly hopping on an airliner with a checked bag to move to LA, there to live on the streets. Some may be driving old cars on their last legs. Some may be taking buses. Some, for all we know, may be walking or hitchhiking. No matter how they do so, these people are undergoing a significant journey because they are drawn to California in general and Los Angeles in particular, and that can only be because the state of affairs in Los Angeles is attracting them.
LAHSA and RAND dropped this work like a hot potato when the data went public.
Both reports cut against the narrative of left-wing politicians and activists, who insist that any claim that out-of-town homeless are flooding L.A. is a “myth.” In 2021, LAHSA stopped publishing previous-location data. In 2025, RAND removed the metric from the organization’s annual report and included it in a separate, lesser-read “annex.”
We asked LAHSA and RAND why they buried this data. LAHSA said it stopped publishing previous-location figures because of respondents’ “varying interpretations of the question.” RAND claimed that it moved the data to the annex “due to a need to save costs on publishing,” and confirmed that the data would remain there in the group’s upcoming report.
In other words, city officials - I'm looking at you, Mayor Bass - were likely embarrassed by the results. That's too bad; policy decisions must be driven, not by feelings, not by embarrassment, but by data, and the data here plainly shows that, for whatever reason, these homeless people are flocking to Los Angeles, and their presence is ruining the city.
Here's the problem: The City of Angels may be vastly underestimating these numbers.
We spent two days recreating RAND’s 2024 study of L.A.’s homeless population, using a slightly larger sample size to ensure precision. We approached people on the streets of the same three neighborhoods—Hollywood, Venice, and Skid Row—and, after identifying ourselves, asked more than 200 homeless a simple question: “Where are you from, originally?”
The results were astounding: 64 percent of the L.A. street homeless said they were from outside the City of Los Angeles, and 53 percent said they were from outside Los Angeles County—a significant increase compared with the LAHSA and RAND studies. Nearly 40 percent told us they were from other states, mostly from states that voted for President Trump in 2024. Six percent told us that they were from other countries, including Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea.
That's a staggering result.
Incentives matter. Los Angeles, like most of our major cities, sees the homeless problems as primarily a housing problem, as though, provided a taxpayer-funded apartment or house, these people will clean up, sober up, get jobs, and become productive members of society, as though the lack of a domicile was the only thing holding them back. That's the purest of corral litter, suitable only for enriching soil. The homeless people in these encampments aren't held back by their lack of a place to hang their hats. They are held back by addiction issues, by mental health issues, by the fact that some of them are just plain unrepentant criminals.
These are the problems that have to be addressed. Treatment programs, even involving an involuntary committal if necessary, can help the addicted. Proper treatment, even involving an involuntary committal if necessary, can help the mentally ill, and there are, sadly, going to be a certain number who will not be able to be released. As for the criminals, close the revolving doors in the jailhouse. It's been proven, time and again, that the way to deal with crime is increased police presence on the front end, and prosecution with strict sentencing on the other.
Los Angeles's current municipal government will do none of these things. That's why the encampments continue to fester. That's why the risks to the taxpaying public form a range of issues including crime, disease, and sanitation, will continue to grow. And that's why these incentives will continue to draw more and more of these people to the City of Angels.
Incentives matter. They always have. They always will.
