American Indian/Alaska Natives (AIAN)
Experiencing Homelessness
For American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) communities in Los Angeles County, invisibility in homelessness has been a long-standing barrier to achieving equality. The launch of the AIAN Experiencing Homelessness Dashboard represents an intentional step toward addressing a key need: elevating the visibility of this community and the disparities experienced in housing and homelessness. It reflects years of advocacy, partnership, and community leadership, calling for accurate, inclusive, and usable data and stories to inform the delivery of programs and services.
This dashboard is not just a collection of charts and tables. It is a tool designed to support transparency, inform decision-making, and strengthen accountability within the County’s homelessness response system.
AIAN Experiencing
Homelessness Dashboard
Los Angeles County’s Anti-Racism, Diversity, and Inclusion (ARDI) Initiative has launched a new AIAN Experiencing Homelessness Dashboard, providing community-centered and disaggregated data to support stronger accountability, advocacy, and system improvement efforts.
Los Angeles County is home to the largest urban AIAN population in the United States—326,810 residents representing more than 200 Tribal Nations. While AIAN individuals make up 3.3% of the County’s population, they remain disproportionately represented among people experiencing homelessness. The most recent Homeless Point-in-Time (PIT) count estimates that 3.6% of people experiencing homelessness in the County identify as AIAN. Between 2022 and 2023, AIAN communities experienced the largest percentage increase in homelessness of any racial/ethnic group.
To help address these inequities, ARDI developed the dashboard to bring together data from LAHSA’s PIT count, administrative datasets, and Census data. The dashboard includes individuals who identify as AIAN alone and those who identify as multiracial AIAN—an intentional approach designed to reduce misclassification, improve accuracy, and prevent erasure of Native communities.
Accurate, transparent, and disaggregated data is essential to understanding the full picture of homelessness among Native communities in Los Angeles County. This dashboard helps illuminate inequities, identify gaps, and strengthen partnerships with Tribes and Native-led organizations working toward housing justice.
– D’Artagnan Scorza, Ph.D., Executive Director of Racial Equity
The dashboard provides system-level insights on:
AIAN homelessness trends over time
Contributing factors
Differences among subpopulations
Touchpoints across programs and services
