Los Angeles declares homelessness state of emergency

Several City Council members said they will introduce a motion committing about $100 million in city funds to address homelessness, though they said they have yet to figure out where they will find the money and whether the money will be spent annually or spread out over time.

“Ending homelessness is a moral imperative that also makes financial sense for our city”, LA City Councilman Paul Krekorian explained to CBS Los Angeles.

With over 44,000 homeless people finding refuge anywhere along the streets of Los Angeles, elected officials prompted for a move on Tuesday to declare the city in a state of emergency due to homelessness.

Allice Callaghan, a Skid Row advocate for the homeless, says that isn’t enough.

His latest funding proposal, laid out in a letter sent on Monday to the city’s chief administrative officer, calls for providing $5.1 million in short-term rental subsidies to rapidly place homeless veterans into housing. Some of those men and women live on the city’s infamous Skid Row, a makeshift camp on public sidewalks that stretches for blocks. Efforts to build new housing units have floundered, and the city’s spending on affordable housing has plummeted to $26 million, roughly a quarter of what it was a decade ago.

Officials in New York, the nation’s biggest city, which has a more extensive shelter system, say that previous year they had about 3,360 people living unsheltered.

Homelessness is declining nationwide, but the picture remains mixed, with some states and cities dramatically bucking that trend.

Last July, Garcetti declared that he is preparing for a battle plan which he dubbed as the “war on homelessness here in Los Angeles”.

“This is the fallout of not having anywhere near the affordable housing that’s needed”, said Megan Hustings, the interim director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, a Washington-based advocacy group.

The emergency declaration on Tuesday by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and seven city council members underscores the growing alarm over the city’s homeless population, which has risen 12 percent since 2013.

“We have to look at what’s driving people out on the streets, or else we’re just going to be pushing that rock up the hill to have it come back and crush us”, said Garcetti, whose mayoral campaign included a pledge to end chronic homelessness in L.A. Garcetti is pushing for shelters to open their doors 24 hours a day to the homeless in the rainy season and extend winter shelter access by an additional two months over the winter.