LA

City

leaders have thrown themselves into battle against homelessness in recent years, spending an ever-growing amount of money on programs designed to pull the city’s most needy residents back from the abyss.

Elected officials have celebrated the opening of new homeless shelters

the

ribbon

S

outside nearly a dozen “tiny home” villages, and welcomed the completion of nearly 3,000 subsidized apartments, paid for in part with funds from a $1.2 billion property tax increase approved by voters.

Still, those efforts weren’t enough to change the bleak picture painted Thursday by Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority officials, who reported that despite those initiatives, homelessness had risen 10% citywide and 9% in Los Angeles . District.

Politicians, business leaders and others from the region reacted with a mixture of frustration and disappointment and even flashes of anger.

Councilman Traci Park, who represents part of the Westside, said the city relies on “bad policies” and underspends on substance abuse and mental health.

“It’s clear to me that what we’ve done so far hasn’t worked,” she said. “Despite spending billions of dollars on this problem in recent years, we have failed to address the growth of street encampments.”

The results of the homeless census, which one council member called “devastating”, have also become routine at this point. In fact, the city recorded an increase in seven of the last eight annual censuses

annual

Budget for addressing the problem is more than $1 billion.

Mayor Karen Bass, who declared a state of emergency for homelessness the day she took office

in Dec

tried to broach some optimistic themes

on

On Thursday, she praised the work of her Inside Safe initiative, which has moved about 1,400 unhoused Angelenos indoors, and a renewed collaboration between city and county officials.

Still, Bass also expressed some of her own fears, saying she is concerned that the expiration of local eviction protections, coupled with the end of several COVID-19 relief programs, will push even more low-income residents into the region on the street. .

“Even with everything we’re doing now, I’m afraid the number will be even higher next year,” she told reporters.

The dismal homelessness numbers have put Bass, Park and other recently elected politicians at City Hall in an odd position, forcing them to answer for numbers collected just six weeks after taking office. The homelessness count was conducted in January, when Bass was just beginning to ramp up her work in fighting the crisis, taking Inside Safe to different parts of the city.

In the months since the census was conducted, Bass has secured approval for a record $1.3 billion in homelessness spending, as part of a city budget that takes effect Saturday. Of that total, at least $250 million will be spent on Inside Safe.

At the same time, the results of the latest count could open Bass a new set of arguments as she calls on other city officials to act with greater urgency, take on new government responsibilities and spend more money on the problem than ever before.

Bas recently convinced the council

members

in support of its drive to pay for treatment beds for homeless people suffering from substance use disorder, a service typically handled by the county, not the city, government. She’s been busy with her plan to buy the Mayfair Hotel, a 15-story building she plans to use

like it

temporary homeless shelter. And she is laying the groundwork for the purchase of several smaller motels, which would also support the Inside Safe initiative.

While the mayor’s team was busy renting and buying hotels and motels, homeless advocates demanded that the city focus on other strategies instead.

Sherin Verghese, an organizer of the Koreatown-based group Ktown for All, criticized the city’s reliance on programs like Inside Safe, saying they focus too much on reducing the visual impact of homelessness. Her group is demanding extra protection for tenants and the creation of new public housing.

All we’ve seen are plaster solutions, she said.

Los Angeles County Business Federation policy manager Denise Kniter expressed her confidence in Bass, saying she had

has

more targeted action against homelessness than its predecessors.

Still, in light of this year’s numbers, Kniter says city and county leaders should reassess their homelessness programs.

“A lot of money has gone into financing homelessness, but some of those programs are clearly more effective than others,” Kniter said.

Councilor Nithya Raman, head of the council’s homelessness commission, said the latest numbers are disappointing but “not totally shocking” given what happened in the run-up to this year’s homelessness census.

For much of last year, city and county leaders continued to close the hotels of their Project Roomkey locations that had been converted into temporary homeless shelters during the pandemic, backed by federal funds. That program yielded more than 4,300 rooms at its peak.

Raman managed to keep one of those hotels, located in her Hollywood Hills neighborhood, as temporary housing for the homeless. But other locations in Chinatown, MacArthur Park and elsewhere were dismantled.

“We’ve lost some of the shelter resources we had over the course of COVID, and haven’t replaced them in most places,” Raman said.

The city could soon see another kind of aid from the federal government.

Last month, LA was one of five cities selected by the White House to participate in All Inside, a new two-year federal program targeting homelessness

Called All Inside

. That initiative, part of President Biden’s goal to reduce homelessness in the U.S. by 25% by 2025, is aimed in part at cutting some of the bureaucracy that keeps homeless people from getting help, according to the Bass team.

LA should also experience some relief as more and more projects funded by Proposition HHH, the 2016 voter-approved bond measure, open up. A report released last month by the city’s housing department said 5,700 units that funded from that measure are on track to be completed in the next two years.

City and county voters generally were

generally

supporting new efforts to tackle the homelessness crisis, even as the problem has gotten worse.

In 2017, county voters approved Measure H, an increase in sales tax to pay for apartment vouchers and social benefits for unhoused residents. Last fall, city voters adopted a so-called

“

mansion tax,

“

which could generate hundreds of millions of dollars per year, but is currently the subject of litigation.

Whether the public will remain generous is far from clear. Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, whose district stretches from Gorman in the northwest to Claremont in the east, said the latest homelessness figures should be a “wake-up call.”

Barger said many cities in her district are frustrated with how the county has spent its funding from Measure H, which expires in four years and cannot be renewed without voter approval.

“Make no mistake: if Measure H came before voters tomorrow, it would fail,” she said. Because people don’t feel like they’re seeing anything for the investment.

Councilman Kevin de Len, whose district includes downtown, called the number of homeless people across the city “appalling,” saying they underline the need for more affordable and transitional housing. De Len believes those numbers will support his efforts to bring either a small home village or some other type of temporary homeless housing to a vacant lot across from City Hall, next to Grand Park.

“We’ve studied this to death and the answer has always been the same: urgently more homes,” he said.