About 62,000 students in Los Angeles County lacked stable housing during the 2024-25 school year. The figure is part of a record 298,000 homeless K-12 students statewide, according to a UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools report published Wednesday, Aug. 26.

The L.A. County total means nearly 5% of the county's students experienced homelessness. Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties together accounted for half of all homeless students in California.

The statewide total represents a 10% increase from the pre-pandemic peak in the 2018-19 school year and a jump from the nearly 270,000 students the center identified in its 2020 report.

"The sheer magnitude of how many students are experiencing homelessness and how much it's increased, that was the biggest finding for us," Grace Kim, research analyst and lead author of the report, told LAist.

Racial disparities and academic gaps

One in 12 Black and American Indian/Alaska Native students were identified as homeless in 2024-25. Students without stable housing were about 20 percentage points less likely to meet state math and reading benchmarks than their housed peers and graduated at lower rates.

The gap is wide. Chronic absenteeism and suspension rates among homeless students have declined but remain far above the overall student population, the report found.

An undercount by design

The 298,000 figure likely understates the problem. It reflects only students schools have formally identified as homeless under the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which requires districts to provide resources such as transportation so housing-insecure children can access education. During the pandemic, school closures made it harder for staff to spot warning signs of housing instability, causing a sharp drop in identifications.

State funding and what comes next

California's most recent budget includes $116 million to help schools identify and support homeless students. The UCLA report called it the largest dedicated state funding for housing-insecure youth in the country.

The report's authors described the funding as "encouraging" but said one-time money is not enough. Joseph Bishop, executive director of the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools and the report's co-author, said the center's research should serve as "a roadmap for prevention and systems change."

The report recommended establishing a dedicated, ongoing funding stream for districts with the highest counts of homeless students, targeting regional interventions with the new state dollars, and monitoring racial disparities in identification rates.

The full report, which draws on California Department of Education data from the 2017-18 through 2024-25 school years, includes district-level breakdowns available on the center's website.