How fast — and how often — LA actually closes a 311 request

When you report something to Los Angeles through 311, how long until the city actually closes the request — and does it close it at all? We took every resident-facing request filed between May 1 and June 16, 2026 — 190,406 of them — and followed each one forward. Every case in that window has had at least two weeks to resolve, so this measures follow-through, not a backlog that simply hasn’t had time yet.

For most everyday requests, LA is genuinely fast. A dead animal removal request typically closes in about 13 hours, and 97% of them close at all; the routine junk-and-graffiti workload that dominates 311 turns around in a day or two. Two numbers tell each category’s story: how quickly a closed case closes, and what share of the filed cases close at all.

The contrast at the bottom of the list is the real finding. Streetlight repair requests that do close take a median of about 11 days — but follow-through is the sharper gap: only 7% of streetlight repair requests filed in this window have closed at all, versus 97% of dead animal removal requests. Speed and completion are different promises, and the city keeps them unevenly depending on what you ask for.

A few request types are missing from the table on purpose. Homeless encampments and Sidewalk problems almost never reach a “Closed” status in the 311 feed within this window — they’re routed for outreach, referral, or long-horizon capital work rather than closed like a graffiti job. Reporting them as “0% fixed” would be misleading, so we leave them out rather than score a lifecycle the data can’t see.