Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass says that more than 4,000 homeless Angelenos will have been housed, including more than 1,000 through her Inside Safe initiative, by next week when she hits her 100-day mark in office. That figure, she believes, will keep her on track to house 17,000 homeless people by the end of her first year as mayor, as she had said she’d do while on the campaign trail.
Moreover, the Bass administration anticipates moving 100 people on the streets of skid row into the L.A. Grand Hotel by the end of next week, and another 150 the week after. The goal is to house 2,000 people from skid row over the next three years, according to Mercedes Márquez, the mayor’s chief of housing and homelessness solutions.
The numbers were shared by the mayor and representatives from her administration, who held a roundtable meeting with members of the press on Wednesday, March 15, to provide an update on the city’s efforts to combat homelessness.
“We have disproven that people do not want to leave the streets,” Bass said. “A lot of Angelenos believe that those people were there because they want to be there and they were never going to leave.”
Bass launched Inside Safe during her second week in office to quickly move unhoused Angelenos indoors. The vast majority are in temporary motel or hotel rooms, though the goal is to place them all in permanent housing while providing mental health services, substance abuse treatment or other support services.
While some people were resistant to participating in Inside Safe at first, as they saw other people board the bus to move to a motel, they, too, opted to go, Bass said.
No arrests have been made as a result of the Inside Safe operations, according to her administration.
As of Tuesday, Márquez said, 516 unhoused people had been moved indoors through Inside Safe, including 62 who have been placed in permanent supportive housing. City officials believe the number of people served by Inside Safe will about…
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