The Homeless Count

By Stacey Vanek Smith,

Darius Rafieyan

Published April 27, 2018 at 2:21 PM MDT

The homeless population in most of the country has been declining for years, thanks to a strong economy and a low unemployment rate. But in Los Angeles County, the homeless population has been rising fast--nearly 25% in the last year.

A team from USC set out to figure out what was going on. They launched a big survey to ask people how they had ended up on the street. They found that the new homeless population has changed. A lot of homeless people are educated, have jobs, and many are elderly.

Half of them had become homeless for the first time in just the last 30 days.

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Stacey Vanek Smith

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.

See stories by Stacey Vanek Smith

Darius Rafieyan

Darius Rafieyan joined NPR in 2017 as the founding producer of The Indicator from Planet Money. He has produced stories about infectious disease outbreaks, the world's greatest air salesman, and the economics of Tinder.

See stories by Darius Rafieyan