Categories: Politics

The mayor of LA reports that 14,000 homeless people have been taken off the streets

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – MAY 11: Homeless Tierra Signer, 28, who has been living in a tent for the past 4 months, awaits housing under the Inside Safe Program with her belongings, along 400 S. San Vicente Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

The mayor of LA reports that 14,000 homeless people have been taken off the streets

LA politics

Ruben Vives
Doug Smith

June 14, 2023

More than 14,000 homeless people were taken off the streets during the first six months of her administration, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass reported Tuesday.

About 30%, or 4,332, acquired permanent housing.

to additional

10,049 people were placed in transitional housing through city and county programs from December to May, a 27% increase from the same period the year before, according to Bass.

Of those in permanent housing,

about a third moved into new housing units, while the rest used subsidies to obtain rental units.

Bass said the housing placement was a result of

executive guidelines it established

upon entering the office, including a homelessness emergency and the

launch of the Inside Safe program, which is designed to evacuate street camps by relocation

unhoused people indoors.

We think the emergency is clearly continuing, but we do see a way forward, Bass said

at a press conference at City Hall.

Since Bass took

office in mid-December promising to house 17,000 people in its first year, homelessness has been at the top of its agenda.

In April, she announced that $1.3 billion of her proposed $13 billion budget would go to tackling homelessness

,

included

about $250 million for Inside Safe. Previously, the program rented rooms in the city. The Bass team has shifted its strategy to buying real estate and is looking to buy at least eight motels or hotels.

Bass said Tuesday Inside Safe cleared 19 encampments in its first six months, with 1,323 people voluntarily moving into temporary housing, such as hotels, a delay from its first 100 days.

A handout

handed out at the City Hall briefing showed photos of streets in Hollywood, Venice, Harbor City and

South LA before and after they were cleaned. More than 262,000

There were kilograms of garbage

said to have been

DELETED

.

The handout details several challenges facing Inside Safe, including the cost of motel rooms, the difficulty of clearing RV camps, and limited capacity to provide services, in part due to a lack of health care workers and access to drug treatment, as well as homeless service providers who are already stretched thin.

“Community-based organizations have gone above and beyond what they’ve been asked to do,” Bass said. “If someone leaves a tent and enters a hotel, they should be given services on the first day, including a physical examination

,

if they’re open to it, and a meeting with a social worker.”

As a remedy, Bass said she has hired a director of community health to work with local universities and colleges that can provide nurses, doctors and dentists.

Other solutions to get more people off the streets were described in general, without detail, in the document: more persistent outreach to overcome the resistance of some homeless people to move indoors, more long-term rentals

and more permanent housing so as not to spend money on motel rooms.

Bass said its executive guidance to reduce red tape has streamlined the processing of more than 8,000 new homes across 456 projects in the development pipeline.

She said approvals are now obtained in 37 days instead of six months.

The numbers released Tuesday included an update to a report Bass gave after her first 100 days, more than doubling the number of people she initially said had gone inside. By March, she had reported just under 4,000, a number that was revised to 8,726.

Va Lecia Adams Kellum, chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, said the earlier undercount was due to delays and the need to verify the data entered.

We didn’t have complete accounts of the people who were helped, Kellum said. The data has been reviewed and corrected and it gives a good picture of how many people have moved from tents to hotels.”

Times staff writer Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.

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