The LA Fire Department says nearly a third of all firefighting responses in the last seven years have been tied to persons experiencing homelessness, and in a new report, officials suggested the Fire Department should begin to get its own share of the billions of dollars the City has spent on homeless relief efforts to bolster its own $838 million budget.
“The LAFD has and will continue to be directly involved in the direct response to the homelessness crisis,” wrote Battalion Chief Eric Roberts in a memo detailing the department’s resources being increasingly devoted to issues involving persons experiencing homelessness, or “PEH,” in City lingo.
Between 2018 and 2024, LAFD firefighters responded to 232,266 fire calls, and of those, 76,449, or 32.9%, were related to homelessness, with the bulk of the increase — a 475% jump — counted in the number of rubbish fire calls in the last decade, of which 42% were linked to homelessness.
The Fire Department said persons experiencing homelessness made up for nearly 12% of all medical calls, but said the data was incomplete because noting whether or not a person appears homeless is not part of the patient evaluation protocol.
The department memo also points out that since 2021 the City has spent more each year on homeless relief efforts than the entire Fire Department budget, spending an estimated $960,768,059 between 2024 and 2025 on curing homelessness and $837,190,000 on the Fire Department.
The City of LA is facing a potential $1 billion deficit, and Mayor Karen Bass has already called on City agency heads to come up with $500-$900 million in budget cuts.
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