To help the more than 75,000 people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County, officials have long tailored their programs to the needs of subgroups, including veterans, families and the chronically homeless.
Another group eventually joined that list: single homeless women, whose numbers have been increasing and who, at 14,403, are nearly 20% of the county's homeless population.
Last week, researchers released the first countywide study of single homeless women, which found that they suffered extraordinarily high levels of violence, both before and after becoming homeless.
