City leaders from across the country arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Nov. 8, for a two-day U.S. Conference of Mayors gathering to discuss the challenges in addressing homelessness.
The conference is meant to coordinate a national strategy to combat the crisis, share successful practices and build national momentum to address the issue.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who chairs the USCM’s Homelessness Task Force, will lead a Wednesday evening discussion alongside Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve, who is president of the USCM.
“When mayors come together and unite around a common issue that all of our cities are facing, we can make national change,” Bass said in a statement. “Many of our cities are facing similar barriers to moving unhoused people inside and together we will knock those barriers down.”
Bass emphasized that there are consequences “of inaction” and said that confronting homelessness is a matter of “life and death.”
Schieve added, “As a nation, we have not made housing a priority, and the results have been devastating for too many of our fellow Americans who go unhoused.”
American cities are on the “front lines” of addressing the nation’s homelessness crisis, which involve addressing a mental health crisis, too, Schieve said.
Bass, who was named chair of the USCM’s Homelessness Task Force in June, has made addressing homelessness and affordable housing key priorities of her administration since she became mayor nearly a year ago.
Actions Bass has taken since she became mayor include:
- Declaring a homelessness emergency in the nation’s second-largest city her first day as mayor.
- Issuing an executive directive her first week in office to fast-track the construction of affordable housing units and shelters by streamlining review processes. The directive was later clarified after developers found a loophole to propose projects where they weren’t intended to be built. Nevertheless, the directive has resulted in the…
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