During her annual State of the City address, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called on business leaders, charitable organizations and wealthy individuals to use their financial might to move homeless Angelenos indoors.
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 urged those with means to donate private dollars to help with the purchase or lease of buildings that can be converted into homes for the city’s unhoused population.
The homeless count conducted in January 2023 — a month after Bass took office — found more than 46,000 unhoused people in Los Angeles, which was an 80% increase since the 2015 count.
“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 prevented more than a thousand homeless Angelenos from making their way out of interim housing, such as hotel and motel rooms, and into apartments that they can afford.
Bass also used her speech to highlight the ongoing effort to prepare the city for 2028, when it will host the Olympic Games. She also touted her administration’s work in addressing public safety, expanding public transportation and strengthening L.A.’s business climate.
The mayor touted a drop in homicides last year compared with 2022. And she signaled her interest in pursuing a hotly debated project: the long-delayed upgrade of the city’s convention center, for a price tag that could reach least $4.8 billion.
She told the crowd that her office has challenged the status quo on homelessness — “the crisis on our streets is nothing less than a disaster,” she said — and worked more collaboratively with officials from Los Angeles County, which oversees mental health services. She also touted Inside Safe, her signature program that uses hotel and motel rooms to house people.
“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,” Bass 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.
Bass, in her speech, talked about the cost of leaving people on the street. The public “pays the cost of the thousands and thousands of fire, paramedic and police calls,” she said. Shops, restaurants, tourists and office centers also “pay a price” if customers are fearful or businesses leave.
Her new initiative, LA4LA, asks private, business and philanthropic leaders to help the city buy properties and speed up 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.
Monday’s speech comes as the mayor prepares to release her budget for the fiscal year starting July 1.
The city budget is under serious financial pressure, triggered in part by lower-than-expected tax revenues and higher salary costs. The increased spending on city employees 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 ensure that they do not leave for jobs with 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 pay 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 — and we will continue to strategically hire based on real life.”
Bass also defended the city’s new contract with the police union, saying it has led to an increase in applicants hoping to join the LAPD.
Bass is still far from her goal of having a Los Angeles Police Department with 9,500 officers. Last month, the Board of Police Commissioners received a report showing that the department was at 8,888.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
