Malibu Celebrates Fifth Straight Year Of Successfully Making Homeless People Somewhere Else's Problem

MALIBU — In what city officials are hailing as a triumph of "proactive outreach" and housing advocates are calling "pushing people down the Pacific Coast Highway until they become someone else's census data," Malibu announced this week that its homeless population has declined for the fifth consecutive year, dropping to just 44 people in a city where the median home costs $3.2 million and the nearest affordable apartment is a 90-minute drive inland.

The annual Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, conducted over three nights in late January, found 33 individuals and 11 vehicles containing humans within Malibu city limits, down from 46 in 2025 and a peak of 239 in 2020—a staggering 82% decrease that city officials attribute to their "housing-first approach" and absolutely not to the geographic reality that pushing shopping carts uphill toward the Santa Monica Mountains is significantly harder than rolling downhill toward Santa Monica.

Mayor Marianne Riggins celebrated the milestone in a statement that managed to acknowledge the existence of homeless people while simultaneously patting the city on the back for making them statistically invisible.

"While even one person experiencing homelessness is too many," Riggins said, deploying the rhetorical flourish beloved by politicians who have successfully reduced that number to 44, "Malibu's continued decline shows that the City's proactive approach—focusing on outreach, housing placement, and coordinated encampment response—works."

The city's partnership with The People Concern, a homeless outreach organization, has been credited with connecting unhoused individuals to services, housing, and—in many cases—bus tickets to communities with more affordable rent and fewer $15 million beachfront properties.

In 2024 alone, the outreach team placed 72 individuals into housing, the highest number since services began in 2017. City officials declined to specify how many of those housing placements were within Malibu city limits, citing privacy concerns and what one staffer privately described as "the math not making us look as good."

The decline comes as Los Angeles County continues to grapple with a homeless population exceeding 75,000, raising questions about whether Malibu has solved homelessness or simply exported it to jurisdictions with fewer celebrity residents and more permissive sleeping-in-public policies.

The city's "coordinated encampment response"—which provides advance notice, outreach services, and shelter options before sites are cleared—has been praised by officials as a humane alternative to the sweeps conducted in other jurisdictions. Critics note that the phrase "cleared and cleaned" does a lot of heavy lifting in describing what happens after the 72-hour notice period expires.

"We give people options," explained one outreach worker who requested anonymity. "They can accept shelter placement, often in locations 40 miles inland, or they can move their belongings 500 feet down the road and wait for the next notice. Most people eventually get the message."

A 2025 RAND Corporation study found that Los Angeles County's official homeless count was approximately 26% lower than a simultaneous professional count, widening to 32% in areas with aggressive encampment policies. The study noted that "methodological challenges" included individuals "actively avoiding counters" and the physical difficulty of accessing tent encampments in canyons and brush—areas that Malibu's encampment removal teams apparently have no trouble finding.

Meanwhile, the median home price in Malibu remains approximately $3.2 million, suggesting that the city's approach to affordable housing consists primarily of ensuring that anyone who can't afford $3.2 million has been sufficiently encouraged to seek affordable housing elsewhere.

City officials noted that Malibu recently extended its contract with The People Concern through 2027, ensuring continued funding for outreach, housing navigation, and what one critic called "professionally supervised relocation services."

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for LA County's Homeless Services Authority praised Malibu's "localized success" while declining to address where exactly the 195 people who disappeared from Malibu's homeless population since 2020 currently reside.

"Every community approaches this challenge differently," the spokesperson said. "Some build shelters. Some build affordable housing. Some have really good outreach programs and convenient access to the PCH."

At press time, Malibu officials were reportedly considering a proposal to rename the annual homeless count the "Residential Freedom Census" and to classify vehicle dwellers as "mobile housing pioneers" in future reports.

The 45th person experiencing homelessness in Malibu was last seen heading east on PCH with a shopping cart and what witnesses described as "the look of someone who's been outreached."