Five Southland mayors, including Los Angeles’s Karen Bass, were among the 13 California Big City Mayors who met with Gov. Gavin Newsom and key legislators in Sacramento on Wednesday, May 17, to seek more homeless funding for the state’s Homekey program, as well as mental health and substance abuse beds.
The other Southern California mayors were Anaheim’s Ashleigh Aitken, Irvine’s Farrah Khan, Long Beach’s Rex Richardson and Riverside’s Patricia Lock Dawson.
“This is the number one crisis we are facing in California,” Bass said during a news conference in Sacramento. “The only way we will solve it is by acting together with locked arms, as we say in Los Angeles, to bring folks inside for good.”
Bass said no mayor can “work alone” to face the homelessness crisis, and that’s why recent state investments and partnerships have been so critical.
“While this year’s state budget must be difficult, the need for housing interventions and services must remain a top priority,” Bass said. “We need to ensure additional funding in this budget to make an even bigger impact.”
The California Big City Mayors, a coalition of mayors of the state’s 13 most populous cities, issued a letter to Newsom and state legislators last week, a day before he released a revised budget proposal for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
In the letter, the coalition insisted the homeless crisis continues to be its No. 1 priority, and the need to address homelessness should be reflected through the state’s budget.
“For this reason, we respectfully request — as our top budget priority — continuing and sustaining HHAP (Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention) funding with direct allocations for big cities,” the letter said, “with a minimum allocation of $2 billion per year in FY 23-24, 24-25 and 25-26 for a total of $6 billion.”
As Newsom’s administration and legislators develop policy to address homelessness, the coalition proposed a framework to…
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