A little help here: MyLA311 reports rise 5.2% in 2024

When people in Los Angeles need immediate help, they dial 911. But when it’s not an emergency, and rather a request for a basic service, there’s another number: 311.

Angelenos increasingly picked up the phone—or used the MyLA311 website or app—in 2024. A total of 1,415,288 calls for service were placed, marking a 5.2% increase over the prior year.

Still, the 2024 total was short of the 1.49 million calls made during the pandemic year of 2020.

The most requested service in 2024, according to publicly available MyLA311 data, was bulky item pick-up, accounting for nearly 675,000 calls, or 47.7% of all requests. That was followed by the 317,000 graffiti removal reports, or 22.4% of the total.

There are huge discrepancies in call volume and type of request depending on neighborhood. Boyle Heights generated 49,574 reports last year, with 59% seeking graffiti removal. The next highest tally was Van Nuys, with 41,129 calls. There, the most-needed service was bulky item pick-up.

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Ten neighborhoods each produced more than 30,000 MyLA311 reports in 2024. There were at least 15,000 service requests in 33 different communities. 

Here is a breakdown of some of the services people wanted.

Clearing bulky items

Many Angelenos regularly dial 311 to have the city haul away an old sofa, desk or other item that does not fit in the garbage bin or a building’s dumpster. The busiest month for bulky item pick-up last year was July, with 65,931 requests.

As with overall calls, the recent bulky item pick-up peak occurred in 2020, when COVID meant more people were contacting the city, rather than trying to get rid of large items on their own. That year there were more than 713,000 reports.

Three of the four neighborhoods with the most bulky item calls in 2024 were in the San Fernando Valley. Tops was Van Nuys (19,770 requests), followed by San Pedro (16,920), North Hollywood (16,835) and Sun Valley (15,327).

Getting rid of graffiti

The rampant graffiti that went up on a stalled Downtown housing project last February garnered international headlines. However, the total number of citywide clean-ups in 2024 was down from the previous year. In fact, since 2018, the annual count has bounced in a narrow range between about 314,000 and 347,000 reports.

When a call comes in to the MyLA311 system, dispatchers direct it to an organization that does eradication in specific areas. The graffiti removal total includes tags that the clean-up crews see and proactively paint over.

Crews were busiest last year in Boyle Heights (29,433 reports). Next on the list were Downtown (23,763), Westlake (16,464) and Sylmar (13,354).

Dumped on

Although not the most common MyLA311 report, illegal dumping is likely the most problematic. This is when a person or business opts not to pay proper disposal fees for their refuse—sometimes construction debris, or even hazardous materials—and instead throws it in an alley, on a vacant lot, or somewhere else, creating instant blight. The dumping often occurs at night.

Illegal dumping complaints had tumbled in 2022 and 2023. But the number ballooned by 19.4% last year, to 114,268 reports.

Still, as was the case with bulky item pick-up and graffiti, counts were higher in the COVID year of 2020.

For unknown reasons, the situation worsened significantly in the second half of 2024. From January through June, there was only one month with more than 9,000 bulky item pick-up requests. But five of the six months from July to December produced more than 10,000 reports.

The San Fernando Valley gets dumped on more than any other part of the city. The neighborhoods with the most complaints last year were Van Nuys (4,558), Sun Valley (4,025), North Hollywood (2,995) and, in South L.A., Vermont Square (2,880).

Teeming tents

A front-burner issue in 2024 was homelessness. Mayor Karen Bass continued to make addressing the crisis a cornerstone of her administration. 

Reports of tent encampments to MyLA311 soared in 2024, possibly because Bass had encouraged people to call, especially in areas where an Inside Safe operation to get people into hotels or motels had occurred. There were 85,991 encampment reports in 2024, up 18.9% from the previous year.

Another potential driver of the increase was a series of Los Angeles Times columns by Steve Lopez about the crushing homelessness and fentanyl addiction crisis in MacArthur Park. By the end of the year there had been 6,593 calls in Westlake, the neighborhood that includes the park.

That far surpassed the communities with the next highest totals: Downtown (3,410), North Hollywood (3,377) and Koreatown (3,254).

Animal crisis

A less-utilized MyLA311 service is dead animal removal. After a call, a Bureau of Sanitation employee will haul away a deceased animal, whether it’s a beloved pet that passed, or a feral creature struck by a vehicle.

There was a disconcerting rise in dead animal calls in 2024. The 32,398 reports was the highest annual total ever, and eclipsed the 2023 count by 10.2%.

The most dead animal pick-up calls last year came from San Pedro (870). The next highest totals were, once again, all in the Valley: Northridge (848), Van Nuys (810) and Sylmar (792).

How we did it: We examined publicly available MyLA311 service data from Jan. 1, 2018–Dec. 31, 2024. For neighborhood boundaries, we rely on the borders defined by the Los Angeles Times. The city of Los Angeles may update past service requests with new information, or recategorize past reports. Those revised reports do not always automatically become part of the public database.

Have questions about our data or want to know more? Write to us at askus@xtown.la.