When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass recently gave her State of the City Address, two of the biggest priorities she highlighted were rebuilding the shrinking LAPD and investing the the Inside Safe program to provide transitional housing to Angelenos living on the streets.
In fact, Mayor Bass, who in December declared a state of emergency on Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis, is now proposing an allocation of $1.3 billion to tackling this crisis — about 10% of the city budget.
Bass joined Larry Mantle on LAist’s public affairs show AirTalk, which airs on 89.3 FM, to update us on her administration’s goals, one of which is housing 17,000 people in her first year of office.
Bringing people off the streets
Since the immediate goal is to bring people off the streets, she says interim housing will play a key role. In her first 100 days, Bass said the city has been able to help over 1,200 people move from encampments to motels.
This has been a success, she says, as the cleared encampments have not filled back up, and people have been leaving them willingly.
But a motel room that might cost $100 or more each night is not sustainable for housing thousands of people in the long term, Bass said — that’s why her budget actually calls for purchasing hotels and motels.
“I don’t care how fast you build something; we can never build fast enough to end street encampments. So we have to come up with a permanent method of temporarily housing people.”
Mayor Bass said that most unhoused people won’t need ongoing housing from the city. She says many people living in vehicles or tents are employed full-time, and for various reasons, like a poor credit…
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