Santa Monica will get monthly counts of its unsheltered homeless population under a new partnership with RAND Corporation, City Manager Oliver Chi announced Oct. 28.

The counts started this month, Chi said in his newsletter published by Santa Monica Next. RAND will use the same methodology it has applied for several years in Hollywood, Venice and Skid Row, where professional canvassers walk and drive every block to tally people living outside.

Until now, the city's only regular measure of homelessness has been the annual Point-in-Time (PIT) count, a federally required one-night snapshot. RAND's own research has found that count significantly undercounted the unsheltered population in recent years, Chi said.

The Santa Monica Daily Press reported that the city has ended its contract with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) for counts and will now pay for the RAND-administered monthly count instead.

What the new counts will track

Beyond headcounts, RAND will conduct 50 voluntary, anonymous demographic surveys each quarter, totaling 200 per year. Those surveys aim to capture information the count alone cannot, Chi said, such as how long people have lived in Santa Monica, which services they use and what barriers keep them from housing.

RAND will deliver monthly activity reports, quarterly analyses and a year-end summary. The city plans to feed that data into its Housing Focused System of Care framework and its public Scorecard data dashboard.

Why the annual count falls short

A separate RAND report released in October 2025 found LAHSA's count was 26% too low in 2024 and 32% too low in 2025 in Hollywood, Venice and Skid Row, according to the Daily Press.

RAND researcher Sarah B. Hunter explained the gap in an August commentary published by RAND. The LAHSA count relies on thousands of volunteers who visually survey neighborhoods over a few nights, a method that depends on spotting easy-to-see indicators like tents. But tent dwelling fell 55% in those three neighborhoods between 2021 and late 2025, according to RAND's LA LEADS study. That drop was offset by more people sleeping in cars, vans and RVs or sleeping rough on sidewalks and in alleys.

RAND's methodology uses only professional canvassers. Two staffers cover each block independently, and if their totals differ by more than 10%, the block gets recounted.

Where Santa Monica stands

The 2026 PIT count found 718 people experiencing homelessness in Santa Monica, down 11.6% from 812 in 2025, with unsheltered homelessness falling 18.7%, Chi said. Over the same period, homelessness rose 3.4% in the city of Los Angeles and 1.2% countywide, according to the Daily Press.

RAND had recommended that Santa Monica adopt more frequent measurement with public-facing performance indicators, noting that existing data provide "only a minimal portrait" once a year, the Daily Press reported.

The partnership comes as the city overhauls its homeless services. The council voted this year to close the SaMoShel congregate shelter and build a city-controlled Housing Focused System of Care. Chi said the RAND data will feed directly into that system as results come in over the next several months.