2,100 deaths in 10 years: how fentanyl is devastating Los Angeles’ unhoused community

Brett Feldman, director of the USC street medicine team, treats unhoused people at their tents and offers harm reduction supplies. Photograph: Alex Welsh/The Guardian

They died in parks, cars, motels, alleyways, bus stops, bathrooms and tents. Some collapsed on busy city streets, others in remote desert terrain. The oldest victim was 81. The youngest was one day old.

A new analysis by the Guardian reveals that fentanyl claimed the lives of more than 2,100 people living on the streets of Los Angeles county and in homeless shelters between 2014 to 2023.