Four recently published UCLA-led studies draw a direct line between climate disasters, housing instability and homelessness, with researchers pointing to the 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires as one of the most recent examples.
In the case of the January 2025 fires, approximately 200,000 people lost their homes. “The wildfire was the most devastating … urban wildfire in history, and as traumatic as it was for people who lost their homes, it was equally devastating for people living on the street,” Randall Kuhn, a professor in the UCLA Fielding Department of Community Health Sciences and co-author of three studies, said in a university news release accompanying the most recent study published Thursday.
Of those experiencing homelessness in affected communities who were surveyed in the study, more than three-quarters reported injuries or other major disruptions in their lives due to the fires.
These are the latest findings in a broader set Four recently published letters He argues that homelessness should be understood as more than just a chronic housing problem. Indeed, Kuhn said the study’s findings show how climate disasters and anti-homelessness policies can influence each other. People who were recently displaced were more likely to report the effects of wildfire, she said, and then the fires made them more vulnerable by damaging tents and destroying property.
“Homelessness is a disaster in itself and a condition in which every month welcomes the arrival of a new disaster,” Kuhn said.
Exposure to smoke during the fires also caused harm: 40% of people reported worsening respiratory symptoms, including coughing, shortness of breath, and wheezing. Kuhn said 31% of unsheltered respondents reported injuries, which were more common among people who were already struggling with other health problems.
More than half of the respondents said finding shelter after the fires has become harder than before.
One of the studies, published in jama network open On April 6, homelessness trends in all 50 states and Washington, DC were examined and found that each home lost due to climate-related events per 10,000 people was associated with a 1 percent greater increase in homelessness.
“Our findings underscore the reality that homelessness is a predictable consequence of climate disasters,” Katherine Leifheit, UCLA assistant professor and lead author of the national study, said in the news release.
According to Leifheit, from 2020 to 2022, the homelessness rate in the US increased by 11% – but if you remove climate disasters from the equation, that number will drop to 8%. The researchers controlled for rents and other economic factors, though Leifheit said the findings should still be interpreted with caution.
The same national study found that COVID-19 pandemic-era eviction protections are blunting an even greater increase in homelessness.
“If states and local governments had allowed evictions to proceed during that period, we estimate the average increase would have been about 20%,” Craig Pollack, a Johns Hopkins physician and co-author of the study, said in the announcement.
Kuhn said the wildfire findings also showed how disaster response systems can fail people who are already living without shelter.
She said disasters can deprive homeless people of everyday assistance, as outreach workers are laid off and places like libraries, soup kitchens and cafes close. Street medicine teams and mobile clinics that provide medical care directly where homeless people live can help bridge that gap, he said, and mutual aid networks and informal communication systems within the camps can help spread information to people who have phones but aren’t connected to official alert systems.
Another study in the series, published in magazine Social Sciences and Medicine In March, it was found that camp clearing and frequent displacement was associated with poorer physical and psychological health among homeless people in Los Angeles.
The study found that nearly one-third of unsheltered respondents had experienced widespread devastation in the month before the survey, and nearly half had been displaced. Such instability can cause people to lose medications, documents, belongings and connections to outreach workers and care providers, said Benjamin Henwood, a USC social work researcher and co-author of the paper.
“In the long term, this creates a kind of chronic instability that makes it extremely difficult to engage in health care, maintain treatment or make progress toward housing,” Henwood said. “Basically, it puts people in a constant state of starting over.”
Kuhn said the findings highlight the need for closer coordination between emergency response systems and homeless services to better protect people during future disasters. He said the studies also point to immediate policy responses and broader efforts to reduce the risk of homelessness before and after disasters.
“Taken together, these actions will reduce the risk of homelessness before and after disasters,” Kuhn said.
