Editor's note: We started publishing these progress updates in May 2023. Because the goal of the Promise Tracker was to track Mayor Bass' progress on her goal of housing 17,000 Angelenos during her first year in office and that milestone has passed, we are no longer updating this tracker. (You can read more about what it took to get reliable homelessness data here.)

But we're not done monitoring Mayor Bass' progress addressing the homelessness crisis. We're working on identifying what we should track for the rest of her term. If you have suggestions or questions, send them to us via the form below. And if you'd like to get updates on this project, share your email along with the phrase "Keep me updated."

It was a big and bold promise by Karen Bass as she campaigned to be L.A’.s next mayor: get 17,000 unhoused Angelenos into housing during her first year in office.

The homelessness crisis plays out daily on city streets — confronting residents, business owners and visitors with the visible failure of public policy to keep people sheltered and safe.

And this crisis is top of mind for the people who live and work here. When LAist asked Angelenos what issues most urgently needed Mayor Bass’ attention, 63% of respondents said homelessness and a third listed it as their biggest personal stressor.

Homelessness came up so often across our survey that it seems clear that making progress on reducing homelessness could make or break the new mayor’s first term. Another thing that was clear from what we heard: the Bass administration needs to not just make progress on this issue, but make sure that progress is visible and felt by Angelenos.

That’s why we launched the Promise Tracker: to follow Mayor Bass’ promise on getting Angelenos housed and other key metrics that indicate how her administration is doing on questions like:

• Are people being moved out of encampments and into housing?
• Are people staying housed once they move off the streets?
• Is the mayor adequately expediting the bureaucracy to move people into existing housing and make new housing available?

It's now been a year since Mayor Bass made that promise, and as of Dec. 1, she says she reached her goal, housing at least 21,000 Angelenos.

The Bass administration got there not through any one particular effort alone, but many concurrent efforts, several of which we tracked below for almost a year.

The metrics we tracked for the last year aren’t a complete picture of everything the Bass administration is doing — the city has a lot of different programs in place. We chose these metrics because we believe they serve as key indicators of whether progress is being made and where things need to improve.

Here’s what we've been paying attention to:

1. Number of people housed in Bass’ first year

Mayor Bass’ main campaign promise is to house 17,000 people during her first year in office, in a combination of interim and permanent housing. Part of this relies on the success of her signature program, Inside Safe, which moves people from encampments into motels to receive services and await permanent housing. The other part requires maintaining, streamlining and expanding existing government housing programs.

According to numbers from Bass’ office reflecting data through Dec. 1, 21,694 people have moved into temporary housing like Inside Safe and tiny homes. Her office also said 7,717 people were housed through vouchers and 3,551 people were housed in new permanent units since she took office in December 2022.

Because a person may be counted more than once across categories — for example, if someone moved into temporary housing and then received a voucher to move into permanent housing, they would be counted twice — these numbers can’t be added together to get a total number of people housed. This means we don’t yet have a full picture of how many people have been housed in total.

Anyone who left temporary or permanent housing and returned to living on the streets has not been subtracted from these numbers.

Bass said that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which maintains data on temporary housing, now has an information sharing agreement with the Housing Authority of the City of L.A,. which handles data on some permanent housing programs. That means in the future they’ll be able to calculate how many people have been housed across all programs, which should help resolve the issue of people being counted more than once.

2. Number of people who’ve entered and left Inside Safe

Inside Safe is Mayor Bass’ signature homelessness program. While her administration has regularly tracked the number of people moved into Inside Safe as part of that larger goal of housing 17,000 people, they only began releasing numbers in July on how many people have left the program, either to permanent housing or returning to the streets. The number of people leaving and what type of housing they’re leaving for can be an indicator of how effective Inside Safe is, especially if many people are leaving in order to live on the streets again.

As of Nov. 30, 1,951 people have been moved into Inside Safe, of whom 255 people have moved into permanent housing, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). Bass had promised to move 1,000 people into the program by her 100th day in office, which is marked on the chart, so she has met that goal.

At least 217 people have left the hotels and motels and returned to homelessness, and another 120 people left the program but are working with providers for other housing options, according to LAHSA. The mayor’s office only began releasing detailed data in September on people who left Inside Safe.

3. Total cost of the Inside Safe program over time

According to a Nov. 22 report from the city administrative office, Inside Safe has incurred a total of $93.8 million in expenses since the program began in December 2022. $26.4 million was spent during the 2022-2023 fiscal year, and another $67.3 million has been allocated to be paid out between July and November.

In August, the city acquired the Mayfair Hotel as a new Inside Safe site and set aside about $53 million in upfront costs like building rehabilitation, escrow and cash flow loans. That accounts for the sharp spike in spending between August and September. (About $42.8 million of that money will be reimbursed from other funds.)

Bass requested $250 million for Inside Safe for the current fiscal year, which the City Council approved on the condition that she provide at least two reports a month on program outcomes and how the money is being spent. LAist previously reported that Bass’ team had not been providing biweekly reports on Inside Safe’s spending and outcomes as originally required.

4. Number of federal emergency housing vouchers leased

The federal government issued 3,365 emergency vouchers for housing to L.A. in July 2021 to help with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. These particular vouchers were for people experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness, as well as those fleeing domestic violence or human trafficking. Those who receive a voucher can spend 30% of their income on rent and utilities, and the rest is paid for by the government.

A voucher holder must first find an apartment to rent and a landlord willing to accept the voucher. After that, the city must approve their paperwork and inspect the apartment before they can rent the unit. Because of red tape, the city was extremely slow in approving voucher holders to move into permanent housing in the year after the vouchers were issued. Only 918 vouchers had been leased by the time Bass came into office in December 2022. She promised to speed up the process so all the remaining voucher holders who found apartments could move into permanent housing by the end of her first year.

As of early December, the city had used 2,188 additional federal emergency housing vouchers, but were expected to use all the remaining vouchers by the end of the year, according to the city’s Housing Authority.

5. Number of housing units completed under Proposition HHH

Proposition HHH, the 2016 voter-approved measure to allocate $1.2 billion in funding for 10,000 permanent housing units in L.A. in a 10-year span, has come under heavy criticism in recent years for being above cost projections and behind schedule. Two thousand Prop HHH units were scheduled to come online in 2023, but Bass promised to fast track development even more and have 3,000 new units ready by the end of her first year in office.

When Bass began her term, 2,149 of the 10,000 HHH units had been completed. According to figures from the L.A. Housing Department, 1,893 additional HHH units have been completed between December 2022 and Dec. 11, 2023, putting Bass at just under two-thirds of the way toward her goal. The department updates progress on HHH construction on a monthly basis.

6. Number of people experiencing homelessness in L.A. over time

It’s important to note that Mayor Bass never promised to reduce the overall number of people experiencing homelessness in L.A. — after all, many people fall into homelessness every day. And factors that contribute to homelessness like eviction laws, the overall housing supply and the drug crisis are out of her control. Still, comparing Bass’ efforts against the backdrop of the overall number of people experiencing homelessness in L.A. underscores how big a problem this is and what still needs to be done.

As of 2023, the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count reported 46,260 unhoused people in Los Angeles — 13,580 sheltered and 32,680 unsheltered. This count is done annually, so we’ll only be able to update this once a year. The 2023 count was conducted in January, with results released in late June.

Because we have reached the end of Bass' first year in office, we are no longer updating the data in the tracker. You can read more about what it took to get reliable homelessness data in our companion piece, "Why It's So Hard To Know How Many Unhoused People Mayor Bass Has Housed."