In her ongoing effort to secure federal support to address the city’s homeless crisis, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, on Tuesday, Feb. 7, courted another member of the Biden Administration in town to hear firsthand from those on the streets and service providers working to help them.
Bass welcomed Jeff Olivet, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. Together, they toured Skid Row, visited an encampment where individuals were preparing to move into temporary housing offered through L.A.’s Inside Safe initiative, and met with service providers and government agencies to discuss federal policies on homelessness and substance abuse.
Bass and Olivet later visited the Hilda Solis Care First Village near Chinatown to check out interim housing for the homeless that was built with shipping containers.
Since the Biden Administration announced a national goal of reducing homelessness 25% by 2025, Bass has repeatedly made clear she wants federal officials to invest in the nation’s second-largest city.
“We wanted you to know that if the White House goal was to reduce homelessness in the United States by 25%, if you come to the (homeless) epicenter of the country, you can actually make a significant dent in achieving that goal,” Bass said, directing her remarks to Olivet at a news conference outside the Asian American Drug Abuse Program near the Crenshaw District.
Olivet acknowledged that reducing homelessness by 25% over the next couple of years is “ambitious” and indicated that he believed L.A. would be a major player in that effort.
The federal goal, he said, “is one that we will not and cannot reach without Los Angeles. As your work goes, so will our work go nationally.”
“And I believe, right down to my core,” he continued, “that we can solve homelessness right here in Los Angeles. And if we can solve it here, we can solve it anywhere.”
Before the news conference, Bass and Olivet joined a roundtable discussion…
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