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The city of Los Angeles has a mounting backlog of requests from the public to clean homeless encampments, prompting the city’s Bureau of Sanitation to seek millions of dollars more to pay for the sweeps.

Clean Streets Los Angeles, a program started by Mayor Eric Garcetti, has nearly 6,000 requests pending to clean encampments citywide, according to data through early February.

Because there can be multiple calls to clean up the same site, officials say there are far fewer than 6,000 encampments. Also, some of the requests may be closed if a preliminary visit shows no sign of a camp.

A Bureau of Sanitation report on the backlog released last week cites a rising homeless population and an informed public that increasingly knows how to call for cleanups. The city gets about 1,900 requests a month for cleanups, a nearly threefold increase over two years ago, according to the report.

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