Homelessness Causes State of Emergency in LA

In Los Angeles, the homeless are everywhere.

Over the past two years, the number of people living in the streets increased from 23,000 to 26,000 according to official figures from Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. He issued a directive Monday that the city free up $13 million in the coming months to help house people living in increasingly visible sidewalk encampments.

“These are our fellow Angelenos”, Garcetti said Tuesday, referring to the people who regularly sleep on the lawns and benches around City Hall.

“The city has pushed this problem from neighborhood to neighborhood for too long”, Garcetti, a Democrat, said at a news conference.

The state of emergency motion lists some of the factors fueling the growth of the homelessness as a shortage of affordable housing and the lack of emergency shelter. “Hundreds of outreach workers” will talk to the homeless in order to persuade them to move into housing and accept the mental and physical help that so many need. “Yes, 85 percent of the city’s homeless population lives outside of Skid Row, throughout the city”. “This approach to homelessness has failed”.

More details are to come on the mayor’s larger plan. Some lawmakers are wondering just where in the city’s coffers he expects to find the money.

Last time I mentioned the plight of the homeless in this space, I got a tut-tutting note from a reader out in the great 818: “There is a simple fact that many people refuse to recognize”.

According to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the situation needs settlement at once.

The proposal – which requires a city council vote for approval – would devote the money to more permanent housing, shelter beds and other homeless services, officials said.

Although other big USA cities have seen rising homelessness numbers, L.A.’s problem has gained special notoriety.

Businesswoman and community advocate joins panel dedicated to promoting gender equity in City government and all of Los Angeles. Earlier this month, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced new requirements that force public-private applicants for federal grants to describe “the strategies… to ensure homelessness is not criminalized”. The destitute women and men on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, many of them mentally and physically ill; the families tossed from their apartments for being unable to pay the skyrocketing Southern California rents; the fresh-out-of-prison clients of Union Station in Pasadena suddenly on the streets with no job skills – they’re not bums. He also suggested designating city-run pools as places for the homeless to shower and easing planning and environmental regulations to speed up construction of low-income housing projects.