Newly released numbers of the 2019 Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority homeless count show a jump in unhoused people camping in the Sepulveda Basin, which community activists hope will lead to more services and supportive housing in the area.

The basin is home to a number of longstanding homeless encampments that have drawn significant community and media attention. Official numbers wavered significantly year to year, which prompted neighborhood council leaders to conduct their own ad-hoc homeless count in recent months.

Over three years starting in 2016, LAHSA’s homeless count shows a 34% increase in people living in the Sepulveda Basin — from 78 people to 105. Yet in 2017, 253 people were counted and in 2018, just 32. This year, that number is 105.

LAHSA professionals have urged lay people to analyze LAHSA numbers with caution, and say the yearly homeless count is meant to be only an estimate and has limited impact on funding allocation. But local leaders continue to mistrust the numbers.

Some local advocates suggest that homelessness in the Sepulveda Basin, a 4-mile natural expanse of land north of the 101 and west of the 405, draws more outcry because it’s on the affluent side of town. Recreational space like golf courses, baseball fields, dog parks, wildlife reserve and a Japanese garden make up most of the area.

“Everybody sees encampments on Van Nuys Boulevard during the week but on the weekend they want to ride their bike or go golfing to relax and get upset when homeless people are there,” said homeless advocate Paul Read. “I hear a lot of that.”

Compared to neighborhoods just a few miles northeast, rates of homelessness in the basin are low. Per LAHSA count data, Van Nuys and Pacoima saw an average 60.8% increase in homeless individuals in three years – with 574 and 434 people in 2019, respectively. North Hollywood alone is home to 620 unsheltered people.

Yet as someone who has spent years delivering meals and supplies to basin dwellers, he said he’s certain more than 105 people live in tents, makeshift shelters and vehicles in the basin. But many of the area’s encampments are difficult to see, behind the trees and tucked away from street view.

“It’s dark and scary down there. I don’t blame them for not going at night,” he said. “But they should go during the day because it seems like they’re taking a guess.”

Out of similar distrust in last year’s official numbers, members of the Encino neighborhood council spent the past month conducting their own count in the most lived-in parts of the basin.

Those include along Bull and Haskell Creek as well as a pocket along the south of Burbank Boulevard. The latter has been nicknamed ‘The Bamboos,’ where basin flooding this past winter created a stew of toxic debris. In recent years, a fire broke out and one woman died inside, though some inhabitants have found housing.

Encino leaders fear encampments pose serious health and environmental issues, and that homeless undercounts curtail the availability of resources and political capital to build supportive housing.

“I don’t think [LAHSA volunteers and staff] go into the encampments. They don’t take the hikes like we take the hikes,” said council president Alex Garay. “The counts are completely off.”

He and another board member traversed different areas with a GIS mapping app, attempting to replicate LAHSA counting techniques.By their informal count, between 550-600 individuals live in the basin.

The group is hoping to organize a city-supported cleanup and ask Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare homelessness a “state of emergency”.

LAHSA’s Chief Program Officer Heidi Marston said that it’s entirely possible the 2019 count didn’t include every single tent or individual, but that’s simply not the aim. The agency, she added, is planning to roll out quarterly reports on specific communities so residents Garay can see what homeless services are underway and on the way.

“We use the homeless count as a regional tool to help us establish a benchmark,” Marston said, acknowledging that places like the Sepulveda Basin are more difficult to count and anyone is welcome to undertake their own.

“The count is one moment in time on an evening in January. So if there was to be another count now, not only would the methodology look different but I think those numbers are always changing.”