The LA fires aren’t just causing homelessness — they’re making it worse, a new study finds

Four newly published studies led by UCLA draw a clear line between climate disasters, housing instability and homelessness, with researchers pointing to the 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires as one of the most shocking recent examples.

In the case of the fire of January 2025, about 200,000 people lost their homes. “The wildfires were among the most painful urban fires in history, and as painful as they were for those who lost their homes, those who lived on the streets suffered,” Randall Kuhn, a professor in the UCLA Fielding Department of Public Health Sciences and a co-author of three of the studies, in a statement released by the university recently, published on Thursday.

Of the people experiencing homelessness in the affected communities surveyed in this study, more than a third reported injuries or other major disruptions in their lives as a result of the fire.

Those are the latest results in a wide set of four recently published papers which argue that homelessness should be understood as more than just a chronic housing crisis. Indeed, Kuhn said the study’s findings show how climate disasters and anti-homelessness policies can go hand in hand. He said that people who were recently displaced from their places are more likely to report the effects of the wildfire, and the fires put them at risk of destroying tents and destroying property.

“Homelessness is a crisis in itself, and it’s a situation where most people every month welcome the arrival of a new crisis,” Kuhn said.

Exposure to smoke during the fire also had adverse effects: 40% reported worsening respiratory symptoms, including coughing, shortness of breath and wheezing. Kuhn said 31% of uninsured respondents reported an injury, which is more common among people who already have other health problems.

More than half of respondents said it is more difficult to find shelter after the fire than before.

One of the lessons, published in JAMA Network Open on April 6, examined homelessness trends in all 50 states and Washington, DC, and found that each home lost to weather-related events per 10,000 people is associated with a one-point increase in homelessness.

“Our findings underscore the fact that homelessness can be seen as a predictable consequence of climate disasters,” Kathryn Leifheit, UCLA assistant professor and lead author of the national study, said in a news release.

According to Leifheit, from 2020 to 2022, the number of homeless people in the US increased by 11% – but if you remove climate disasters from the equation, that number would have decreased to 8%. The researchers controlled for rents and other economic factors, though Leifheit says the findings should still be interpreted with caution.

A similar national study found that preventing evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to blunt what would have been a significant increase in homelessness.

“If state and local governments had allowed deportations to continue during that time, we estimate that the average increase would have been about 20%,” said Craig Pollack, a Johns Hopkins physician and co-author of the study, in a statement.

Kuhn said the findings of the wildfire also revealed how disaster management programs can fail people who are already living without a place to hide.

She said disasters can cut homeless people off from day-to-day support, as outreach workers are diverted and places like libraries, soup kitchens and restaurants are closed. Street medicine groups and mobile clinics, which provide direct medical care to homeless people, can help close that gap, he said, and mutual aid networks and informal communication systems within the camp can help spread information to people who may have phones but are not connected to formal warning systems.

Another study in the series, published in magazine Social Sciences and Medicine in March, they found that encampment sweeps and regular displacement were associated with poorer physical and mental health among homeless people in Los Angeles.

The study found that about one-third of uninsured respondents had been swept in the month before they were tested, and about half had been displaced. Benjamin Henwood, USC social researcher and author of the paper, said that type of instability can cause people to lose medication, documents, property and communication with staff and care providers.

“In the long run, it creates a chronic instability that makes it more difficult to engage in health care, maintain treatment, or advance in housing,” Henwood said. “In fact, it keeps people in a position to start over.”

Kuhn said the findings highlight the need for closer cooperation between emergency response systems and homeless services so people can be better protected during future disasters. He added that these studies also indicate immediate policy responses and comprehensive efforts to reduce the risk of homelessness before and after disasters.

“Together, these actions will reduce the risk of homelessness, before and after disasters,” said Kuhn.