Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass used her State of the City address to announce a fundraising campaign to bring homeless Angelenos indoors, calling on business leaders, charitable organizations and wealthy individuals to contribute to the effort.
Bass told an audience gathered at City Hall on Monday evening that her administration has already made crucial strides in the fight against homelessness, in part by working more closely with county, state and federal agencies.
Now, Bass is urging those with means to contribute financially to the purchase or lease of buildings that can be converted into homes for the city’s unhoused population.
Bass declared a state of emergency on homelessness in December 2022, on the day she took office. A month later, the region’s homeless count found more than 46,000 unhoused people in Los Angeles, an 80% increase since 2015.
“We have brought the public sector together,” Bass said, standing before a room full of elected officials, department heads, business leaders and political appointees. “And now we must prevail on the humanity and generosity of the private sector.”
The pitch comes as Bass is working to break a logjam that has seriously limited the city’s ability to move more than a thousand homeless Angelenos out of interim housing, such as hotel and motel rooms, and into apartments that they can afford.
Beverly Hills-based investor and philanthropist Stephen J. Cloobeck, who attended Monday’s speech, praised Bass for her work on homelessness so far, calling her “a disruptor.” Cloobeck said he donated $1 million earlier this year to the new fundraising initiative, known as LA4LA.
“There needs to be a pathway for people to get back into society, and be proud of themselves and add value to our community,” he said. “The mayor believes the same.”
Bass also used her speech to highlight the ongoing effort to prepare the city for 2028, when it will host the Olympic Games. And she touted her administration’s work in addressing public safety, expanding public transportation and strengthening L.A.’s business climate.
The mayor celebrated a drop in homicides last year compared with 2022. She also signaled her interest in pursuing an expensive and hotly debated project: the long-delayed upgrade of the city’s convention center.
Bass told the crowd that her office has been challenging the status quo on homelessness — “the crisis on our streets is nothing less than a disaster,” she said — and has worked more collaboratively with officials from Los Angeles County, which oversees public health and mental health services. She touted the work of Inside Safe, her signature program to move unhoused Angelenos out of some of the city’s largest and most dangerous encampments.
“Inside Safe is our proactive rejection of a status quo that left unhoused Angelenos to wait and die outside in encampments until permanent housing was built,” she said.
By April 12, the mayor’s Inside Safe program had moved about 2,600 people indoors from street encampments, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. About half are living in hotels and motels, the agency said.
More than a fourth of the program’s participants, or 613 people, have returned to homelessness. Forty-two have been incarcerated and 38 have died, the agency said.
Bass, in her speech, said there is societal cost to leaving people on the street. The public, she said, pays for “thousands and thousands of fire, paramedic and police calls.” Shops and restaurants suffer when “customers stay away out of fear,” the mayor said.
The mayor has been working with an assortment of civic leaders to create LA4LA, which will focus on acquiring hotels and apartment buildings that can be converted into interim and permanent housing for the city’s homeless population, said Sarah Dusseault, an advisor to Bass on homelessness and other issues. The initiative has already secured a $3 million grant from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and a $5 million loan from the California Community Foundation, said Dusseault, lead strategist for LA4LA.
LA4LA will also raise money to lease entire apartment buildings or help finance the construction of new housing.
“LA4LA can be a sea change for Los Angeles, an unprecedented partnership to confront this emergency, an example of disrupting the status quo to build a new system to save lives,” Bass said.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who attended the speech, praised Bass for being candid about the money that will be needed to address the homelessness crisis.
“She tells the truth,” said Mitchell, whose district stretches from Park La Brea to Carson. “As a resident of the city of L.A., I respect that.”
Monday’s speech comes as the mayor prepares to release her budget for the fiscal year starting July 1.
The city has been under serious financial pressure in recent months, triggered in part by lower-than-expected tax revenues and higher salary costs. The increased spending stems, in part, from a salary agreement negotiated by Bass with the union that represents Los Angeles police officers.
That contract will provide four raises over a four-year period and give officers new retention bonuses to discourage them from leaving for other law enforcement agencies. The deal also hikes officers’ starting pay by 13%, taking it up to about $86,000 annually.
On Wednesday, the City Council is scheduled to vote on another package of employee pay hikes negotiated by Bass — this time with thousands of civilian employees. Those agreements are expected to add $1 billion to the annual budget by 2028.
To free up money for the salary increases, Bass is pushing for the elimination of hundreds of vacant city jobs. Those positions, she said during Monday’s speech, “do not fill potholes, sweep streets or staff parks.”
“Too many of these vacant positions have been there for years and years because of flawed budgeting that does not reflect how departments should actually operate,” she said. “So this year, we will eliminate these ghost positions, while we preserve core services.”
Bass also defended the city’s new contract with the police union, saying it has led to an increase in applicants seeking to join the Los Angeles Police Department.
Bass is still far from her goal of having an LAPD with 9,500 officers. Last month, the Board of Police Commissioners received a report showing that sworn staffing in the department had fallen below 8,900.
