Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the problem?

We believe that anyone who needs shelter for the night should be able to find it someplace in Los Angeles County within 12 hours. Nobody should have to resort to sleeping on the street. We call this involuntary unsheltered homelessness.

Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the lead agency in charge of addressing homelessness in Los Angeles, has a web page that implies that shelter is just a phone call away. If this were true, we would not have a problem. The truth of the matter is that someone seeking shelter is more likely to encounter no answer to phone calls, unresponsive voicemail, or a shelter that has no open beds.

This is simply demoralizing to someone who is already in a desperate situation, and we can fix it.

It should be easy to find and get into shelter. It is not, and this is the pain point on which we are pressing.

2. What is the mission?

Our mission is to find One Open Bed in Los Angeles County every night.

We accomplish this by conducting an ongoing shelter survey wherein we call every shelter and ask one simple question: How many open beds did you have in your shelter last night?

We then post the results of our ongoing survey here on our website.

We have created a simple web app that anyone can use on their phone to make and track shelter survey calls.

3. How can I get involved?

If you would like to help us, you need to start by doing a little homework.

Step 1: Locate your nearest homeless shelter (START HERE). Note how easy or difficult it is to find. If it was easy, great! But if it was difficult, think about what made it difficult and how it can be made easier.

Step 2: Contact the shelter and find out if they have an open bed and how to enter the shelter. Again, note if they have an open bed and how easy or difficult it is to enter the shelter.

After completing this exercise, you will have an understanding of the problem. If you would like to help work towards a solution, contact us and we will set you up with our app.

With very little effort, anyone can become acutely aware of the problem, and awareness inevitably leads to some action, and eventually some solution.

4. What is your vision for the future?

Our vision for the future is that anyone in need of shelter can make one phone call or visit a web page and find a shelter bed that is ready to receive them within 12 hours. Ultimately, we believe that there should be a shelter system in Los Angeles County that receives the phone call or hosts the web page. Until then, we are going to fill the gap.

The tool that we are developing to achieve our vision is the Shelter Survey App, which is designed to be simple and easy to use to get people involved and gather data which can in turn be used to pressure officials and policymakers.

5. Why does this matter?

Unsheltered homelessness is a public health crisis and personal tragedy. Likely, within blocks of where you are right now, there is someone whose life has fallen apart, whose health is deteriorating, perhaps rapidly, who defecates and urinates in or on something that is not a toilet. They are in danger to themself and others.

We don't have to turn our backs on this; there are steps, however incremental, that we can take to address this crisis.

6. What is the difference between a government shelter and a private shelter?

In Los Angeles, the government does not directly operate homeless shelters. Instead, through LAHSA, the government contracts with non-profit groups to provide and operate interim housing programs under strict rules and guidelines. For our purposes, we define a government shelter as a facility that is listed by LAHSA as a shelter on it's website.

A key difference between a government and a private shelter is that a private shelter can be selective about who it accepts, and impose any conditions it likes on it's residents. A government shelter, on the other hand, must accept anyone and cannot throw out someone engaged in bad behavior short of criminal.

7. Are homeless shelters the solution to homelessness?

Shelters are not the ultimate solution to homelessness, but they are a critical first step in preventing the immediate harms of sleeping on the street. They provide safety, basic hygiene, and a stable environment that makes it possible for people to address the underlying causes of their homelessness—whether that's finding employment, accessing mental health services, or securing permanent housing.

8. Why would somebody choose voluntary unsheltered homelessness?

Some individuals prefer sleeping outside rather than in shelters due to restrictions on pets, partners, or personal belongings; concerns about safety, theft, or violence in congregate settings; rules around substance use or mandatory program participation; or simply a desire for autonomy and privacy that shelters cannot provide. Others may have had negative past experiences with shelters or feel more secure in familiar outdoor locations. While these are valid concerns, our focus is on involuntary unsheltered homelessness—people who want shelter but cannot find an available bed—because this represents a solvable problem where the barrier is purely capacity and accessibility, not personal choice.

9. Is a mat on the floor or a cot count as an open bed?

Yes, for the purposes of our survey, any designated sleeping space counts as a bed—whether it's a traditional bed frame, a cot, or a mat on the floor. What matters is not the quality of the sleeping arrangement but whether there is an available space where someone can safely sleep indoors for the night. While we recognize that a mat on the floor is not ideal, it is significantly better than sleeping on the street in terms of safety, exposure to the elements, and access to basic facilities. Our goal is first to ensure that anyone who wants shelter can find it; improving the quality of that shelter is an important but secondary objective.

10. What is "interim" housing?

Interim housing refers to temporary shelter arrangements that provide a bridge between emergency shelter and permanent housing, typically offering stays of several weeks to months rather than just overnight. These programs often include case management, supportive services, and more stability than traditional emergency shelters, with the goal of helping residents address barriers to permanent housing such as income, employment, or health issues. Interim housing can take many forms including bridge housing, transitional housing facilities, tiny home villages, or motel conversions. While different from emergency shelters, interim housing still represents a critical resource for people experiencing homelessness, and we include it in our shelter survey when facilities accept new admissions.

11. Who is to blame for homelessness?

Blame is less useful than understanding the systemic factors that create and perpetuate homelessness: decades of underinvestment in affordable housing, inadequate mental health and addiction treatment infrastructure, income inequality that outpaces wage growth, and the rising cost of living in urban areas like Los Angeles. Individual circumstances vary widely—job loss, medical bankruptcy, domestic violence, family breakdown, substance abuse, or mental illness—but these personal crises occur within a larger context of insufficient social safety nets and housing supply. Rather than assigning blame, we focus on addressing the immediate crisis: ensuring that people who need shelter tonight can find it. Solving homelessness requires coordinated action from government, nonprofits, and community members, not finger-pointing.

12. Why is homelessness so bad in Los Angeles?

Los Angeles faces a perfect storm of factors that contribute to high rates of homelessness: extremely high housing costs relative to incomes, limited affordable housing construction for decades, mild weather that makes street living survivable year-round, a large and diverse metropolitan population with significant poverty, and historically fragmented coordination between the city, county, and 88 independent municipalities. Additionally, California's legal constraints on involuntary commitment for mental health treatment, combined with the closure of state psychiatric hospitals in past decades, mean many individuals with severe mental illness end up on the streets. Despite significant recent investments in homeless services, the rate of people falling into homelessness continues to outpace the rate at which people are housed, creating a persistent and visible crisis.

13. What is the "homeless industrial complex"?

The term "homeless industrial complex" is a criticism that suggests the network of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, contractors, and service providers that address homelessness has become a self-perpetuating system more focused on maintaining funding and employment than actually solving homelessness. Critics point to high administrative costs, lack of measurable outcomes, resistance to accountability, and situations where organizations may have perverse incentives to maintain rather than reduce the homeless population. While these concerns deserve scrutiny and transparency, they shouldn't obscure the fact that many dedicated professionals and organizations are doing essential, difficult work under challenging circumstances. Our approach sidesteps this debate by focusing on immediate, measurable action: making sure there's an available bed for anyone who needs one tonight.

14. Is money being wasted on homelessness? Is there fraud?

Given the scale of spending—Los Angeles County voters approved billions in funding through measures like Proposition HHH and Measure H—questions about efficiency, waste, and fraud are legitimate and important. Audits and investigations have revealed issues including cost overruns on housing construction, inadequate tracking of outcomes, contractors failing to deliver promised services, and gaps in accountability. However, it's crucial to distinguish between waste (inefficiency and mismanagement), fraud (criminal activity), and the genuinely high costs of providing services to people with complex needs in an expensive housing market. Transparency, auditing, and accountability are essential, but the existence of problems doesn't mean we should stop trying to solve homelessness—it means we need better systems and oversight, which is part of why grassroots data collection like ours matters.

15. What is Housing First?

Housing First is an approach that prioritizes moving people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing as quickly as possible, without preconditions like sobriety, employment, or participation in treatment programs. The philosophy is that stable housing is a prerequisite for successfully addressing other challenges like addiction, mental health issues, or unemployment—not something that must be earned after resolving those issues. Supportive services are offered but not mandated, and individuals maintain their housing regardless of program participation or setbacks. While Housing First has become the dominant policy framework in Los Angeles and many other cities, it remains controversial, with critics arguing it's expensive, enables destructive behavior, and doesn't require enough personal responsibility. Our project doesn't take a position on Housing First versus other approaches; we simply work to ensure that emergency shelter—the most immediate intervention—is accessible to anyone who needs it.