Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass took office determined to tackle homelessness in full force. She declared an emergency on her first day on the job, instructed city offices to quickly review assessments of affordable housing projects, and launched Inside Safe, an ambitious initiative to move people from camps to motels and hotels and then put them on the path to permanent housing . .

Since last week, when she marked her 100

e

day as mayor she had some impressive stats to show. More than 1,000 homeless people, mostly from 13 encampments, have moved into transitional housing, she says, and several homeless housing projects have been accelerated.

The Inside Safe initiative has now made its way from the Westside to skid row and to South L

.

a

.

with the aim of reaching the entire city. in one case

bass

prioritized a large encampment in Venice to avoid an enforcement action. “I wanted to show the neighbors there was a way to handle this without law enforcement,” she said

T

Hey Times

Editorial last week.

There’s no doubt about it after that

Get-get-bass

an earful on the campaign trail of residents angry about homeless camps, that Inside Safe has been deployed in areas where residents seemed most hurt.

We are trying to address the encampments where people suffer the most who are both housed and unhoused, she said. (Of course it’s the homeless who suffer. Housed people are usually just annoyed to see encampments on sidewalks.)

She says this approach is about housing people and showing residents that the homeless will

accept such help take it

when it is offered. When neighbors are disillusioned and angry and have not seen a fundamental difference

,

then they say

,

F

or get it arrest these people take these people they are all there because they choose to be there because they are all on drugs. So what I’ve been trying to do for over 100 days is really dispel that myth.

Now the work gets even harder. It is good to temporarily accommodate people in motels and hotels. But there has been some shuffling of people from one motel to another due to unlivable conditions (a cockroach infestation in a motel) and inadequate

employ

Commission

of services

which is unacceptable. People need to be able to settle in and focus on working with their case managers on getting permanent housing.

More important

ly

, Bass needs to find more permanent housing faster. She says 62 people have moved into permanent housing through the Inside Safe program, and she knows it

that is it

not enough. Bass has to provide more housing through projects for the homeless that come online, through master leasing of hotels or apartment buildings and through vouchers that people can use for rent on the open market and finding an apartment in Los Angeles is difficult for anyone, let alone. ​for a homeless person with a voucher worth a limited amount of money.

The point is: housing is what makes homeless people no longer homeless. And renting a small apartment is cheaper than lodging people in motels

,

as many service providers and homeless advocates say. So far, the City Council has shown Bass a lot of goodwill by spending $50 million on Inside Safe. And Bass says she also has state money at her disposal. But as more people move to motels and hotels, this effort will become more expensive. According to the 2022 census, there are 42,000 homeless people in the city.

Va Lecia Adams Kellum

the new head of

the

Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority estimates that the city pays an average of $100 per night for a motel room. That comes

out

up to $3,000 per month

,

and exclusive food.

Bass says the city is helping to supply more home seekers, the people hired to help the homeless find available housing. And she expects to be able to streamline the process by which homeless people are selected and vetted for permanent housing to speed up the process. Everything

by

that should help. Among the rent subsidies the city is using are a few thousand short-term rental vouchers that were funded with emergency federal COVID dollars. That funding source ends in the fall. Bass needs to have a plan so that when the rent subsidies end

,

people with those vouchers have no place to live.

Placing people in housing will be more challenging than placing people in motels and hotels and it wasn’t exactly easy. But if Bass maintains the momentum she’s shown so far, then maybe the city really can help the poorest of the poor get the housing they deserve.