Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Wednesday she expects the city to house more than 4,000 homeless Angelenos by the time she reaches her 100th day in office.

Bass, who appeared with her team at a city hall discussion about homelessness, said she expects about 1,000 of those people to come from her Inside Safe program, which has taken homeless people off the streets and checked them into hotels and motels rented by the city. Of the remaining 3,000, the vast majority benefit from housing programs that were put in place before Bass took office, her team said.

The mayor will celebrate her 100th day on Tuesday.

Inside Safe has gone to 13 locations to date, most recently heading to Echo Park and skid row. Those operations have so far brought in more than 500 people, including 62 who have been given permanent housing with support services, the mayor’s team said.

Between now and next week, Bass plans to reach 1,000 in part by conducting more camp operations. In addition, unhoused people are being moved from winter homeless shelters to transitional housing, including the LA Grand Hotel, which has served as the city’s homeless shelter since the outbreak of COVID-19. The mayor struck a deal a few weeks ago to keep the hotel open after its scheduled January 31 closing date.

Bass said the Inside Safe initiative has

successfully

refuted the idea that homeless people “don’t want to leave the streets”.

“We’ve come across people saying they don’t want to go,” she said. “But on the day of departure or moving when the bus comes, even the people who said they are not going, if they see other people going, jump on the bus.”

Homelessness has been Bass’ main issue since she took office in mid-December. She has declared a citywide state of emergency over homelessness, produced reports on city properties that could be used for new housing and has worked to strengthen ties with her counterparts in the provincial, state and federal government.

During last year’s mayoral campaign, Bass said she would move 17,000 homeless people indoors in her first year, relying on strategies that were expected to cost $292 million.

Sitting next to homeless czar Mercedes Marquez, Bass said her team has also experienced a number of issues over the past three months. In Westlake, her office had to move a group of unhoused residents out of a motel after learning it had a serious roach problem. On the west side, her team found that motel rates were often too expensive and encampment residents had to be sent to motels in other neighborhoods.

City leaders are still developing a strategy to pull homeless people from the hundreds of RVs that line the city’s streets. One problem, the mayor said, is that many homeless people rent those RVs from private owners. “We haven’t cracked that nut yet, but we’re working on it,” the mayor said.

Speaking to reporters, the mayor’s team said more than 2,700 of the 4,000 homeless people being housed have been helped as a result of decisions made before Bass took office. For example, she said the city has completed 614 units of permanent supportive housing, relying on funds from Proposition HHH, the $1.2 billion bond measure that was approved by voters in 2016, well before Bass arrived at City Hall.

The mayor said 1,336 homeless people have moved to temporary housing, such as “tiny home” villages. Of that total, her team takes on 36. Another 775 people were helped with emergency housing vouchers. Bass said her team is taking responsibility for 143.

Council President Paul Krekorian praised Bass for making homelessness such a priority. “The efforts we are making are not the end, they are a beginning,” he said. “And I look forward to further progress in the coming year.”

Earlier this year, Krekorian and his colleagues committed $50 million to Bass’ homelessness initiatives. Of that total, more than $4 million has been spent and another $27 million has been allocated, much of it for motels, Bass said.

Some who work closely with homeless Angelenos expressed reservations about the mayor’s work. Peggy Lee Kennedy, who volunteers with the Venice Justice Committee, said she is concerned that some homeless people are being moved far away from the neighborhoods where they used to live.

In January, an early Inside Safe operation in Venice sent dozens of people to a motel near Hawthorne.

That motel is “not even in the city of LA. That’s unincorporated LA County,” Kennedy said. For those with medical appointments on the Westside, “that’s about an hour and 40 minutes on the bus or something.”

Bitta Sharma, an organizer of the grassroots outreach group Mar Vista Voice, said she too is concerned. In Del Rey, she said, camp residents were eventually moved from motel to motel, living in three

different

locations for just six weeks, she said.

“It seemed extremely disorganized from the start,” Sharma said, “and traumatic for the people being transported to hotels.”

Marquez, the homelessness czar, said the mayor’s team is still learning as it creates a citywide temporary housing strategy, which is intended to serve as a bridge between encampments and permanent housing.

“Every day we grow stronger and learn from whatever mistake or miscue or painful experience,” she said.