Dick Platkin, LA Progressive.
As LA prepares to welcome the world, its unhoused and overcrowded residents face an uncertain future.
Will Olympic organizers confront the housing crisis or simply push it out of sight?
After two years of reported declines, homelessness rose again in Los Angeles in 2026. The city’s unsheltered population increased by nearly 8%, underscoring the urgency of addressing housing insecurity as the 2028 Olympic Games approach.
The 2028 Olympic Organizing Committee has an answer to this development: send the homeless out to the desert. Infact, this has already begun. While there are non-profits, such as the Economic Roundtable which offer more compassionate solutions, everything costs money, and what they offer is unfunded strategies, such as restoring the lives of the homeless through small financial grants, jobs, and housing.
“Restoring the lives of unsheltered residents is an immense task. It will be an Olympic achievement for Los Angeles to accomplish this. Instead of masking a streetscape formed by economic inequality, Los Angeles will become an exemplar for other cities.” (Source: Economic Roundtable)
Assuming that the money for this organization does not magically appear, what are the actual options facing the unlucky people who are displaced by Olympic events through rising housing costs and economic inequality. Even if shipping homeless people to the desert does not materialize, they are still impacted in other ways, such as evictions to make way for Olympic facilities and pricing people out of their neighborhoods for “temporary” Olympic-related housing.
Furthermore, the overcrowded are not even part of the Olympic discussion. Since doubling-up will undoubtedly increase, we can assume that overcrowding will also increase, even though the Olympic planners don’t raise the topic.
Where does that leave things, nearly two years prior to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics? For sure the planners of the upcoming Olympics are as busy as can be, even if housing for those made homeless or shoved into “temporary” housing for Olympic events is an afterthought. While there are elaborate plans already posted for the Olympic events, the plight of the current and future displaced and overcrowded barely raises a yawn among the Olympic planners. Maybe they think it is a police problem, like it was forty years ago, when LA also hosted the Olympics. Or they assume that the homeless and overcrowded can be temporarily moved into neighborhoods away from Olympic events and then allowed to drift back when the tourists leave.
We can assume that the proposals of the Economic Roundtable will not be funded by cash-strapped Olympic organizers. Does this bring us back to 1984, when the police forced many homeless people into parts to the city where tourists didn’t go?
But 2028 is not 1984 for several reasons. There are many more homeless and overcrowded people now than in 1984. In the 1984 they were mostly confined to a portion of the downtown. In 2026 and even more in 2028, they live in most neighborhoods. Even though the city and county now have a declining population, the number of homeless and overcrowded Angelenos has more than doubled from 1984 to the present, largely because the price of housing has increased so much faster than inflation.
This is why I believe that no matter what local governments undertake for the 2028 Olympics, the homeless and overcrowded will still be visible. This, in fact, is what many visitors will remember.
Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner and veteran Planners Network member who reports on local planning issues for City Watch LA, which published an earlier version of this article. Please send any comments or corrections to rhplatkin@gmail.com.
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