LOS ANGELES – The nation's epicenter for street homelessnessispushing forwardwith the mayor'sambitious plan to moveunhoused residents – 17,000 by next year – from tent citiesto hotelsrooms and eventually to permanent housing.
Momentum for clearing city streets of unhoused peoplehas been building nationwide. Portland, Oregon;Washington, D.C.;andMissouriare among the high-profile placesbanning or reducing tent encampmentsin recent months.
All eyes, though, may be on Los Angeles, where about69,000 people live in shelters, onstreets, in cars or in temporary housingin Los AngelesCounty.Pressure to solve the homelessness crisis in the city and county is so great thatMayor Karen Bass says that's why she ran for the city's top job.
If Bass'plan is successful, it willhave an outsized effect on national homelessness numbers and contribute to President Joe Biden's goal of reducing U.S. homelessness by 25% in the next two years, she told USA TODAY.
“My appeal to the White House is:‘Just come to LA. You can meet your entire national goal by helping us in LA.'"
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Emergency declaration 'music to our ears,' HUD says
When Bass declared homelessness an emergency in December, it sped up the process for creating affordable housingand securing motel rooms. Since then, LACounty and neighboring towns have followed with their own emergency declarations.
“The fact that the mayor has decided to make this a priority is certainly music to our ears," Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge told USA TODAY.
In 2022, 40% of people experiencing homelessness in the U.S. were living unsheltered on the street, in abandoned buildings or in other potentially unsafe places. Among adults without children experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles, 82% were living unsheltered on a single night in2022, according to HUD data.
Earlier this month, HUD awarded LAa $60 million grantto address the city's many encampments.The department gave a total of $315million to cities across the U.S.;LAand Chicago receivedthe maximumamount.
Bass' plan to reduce homelessness in LA, known as Inside Safe, probably can be a model for other cities, Fudge said. But she acknowledgedthat"every city has to address the issue the best way they can."
"Everybody doesn’t have the resources that LAhas," Fudge said."Everybody doesn’t have the magnitude of the problem LAhas.”
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One man's tale ofhomelessness in LA
After Will Sens lost his job as a prep cook at a restaurant during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was evicted from the small, partitioned office space he split with a friend in LA's Koreatown.
Soon Sens, 45, was living out of a tentat Echo Park Lake. He was therefor about nine monthsalongside nearly200 other unhoused people.
Then one daycityofficials offered him temporary housing inLA's Grand Hotel through ProjectRoomkey, a statewideshelter program launched in March 2020 that used the same hotel/motel model as Inside Safe, which launched in January.
Sens said theoffer came about two months before thepolice raid of Echo Park Lakein March 2021, in whichthe remaining15 to 20residents were forced to leave, according to theUCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy.
For the next two years, Sens lived at the Grand Hotel, his daily life consumed by waiting for a Section 8 housing voucher and an opportunity to sign an apartment lease.
Sens' new life was alsoisolating: Residents weren't allowed to gather inhallways or the lobby – even in groups of two– andeveryone had to eat meals alone in their room. If a resident broke the rules, they were kicked out of the hotel, Sens said.
At Echo Park Lake, there hadbeen a "tight community," Sens said, with a "people's garden" and a shared kitchenequipped to store donated food. Teaming together, residents organized night security watches, meals and celebratory events, hesaid.
At the Grand Hotel, when he would try to advocate for himself and ask for updates on the housing process, Senssaid he was always met with: "'We'll call you when we got something for you.'"
"There's this air of'We knowwhat's best for everyone,' but in actuality it's just a bunch of chaos," Sens said. "It's just a bunch offrustrated people because the people that are in charge aren't being in charge. They're justgetting by with doing the least amount possible."
In September, afriend from the hotelfinally secured a Section 8 housing voucher, and Sens and his Salvation Army housing navigatorfound a landlord who would accept it.
Sens and his roommate now have astudio apartment of their own in LA's Leimert Park neighborhood. On Valentine's Day, Sens returned to the Grand Hotel and stood at a table outside,giving residentsfried chicken, potato wedges and cake with Ground Game LA, a civic engagement nonprofit.
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End of eviction moratorium looms, lack of housing persists
This year, a handful of tent encampments have been cleared throughoutLA.Bass saidoutreach to encampments is effective because police are not directly involvedand because officials come with immediate offers of motel rooms.
Elsewhere in the country, bans on encampments can lead to jail sentences and fines.
“We’re trying to get people housed. We’re not punishing people for being poor," Bass said.
Critics say Bass' plan just perpetuates another cycle: homeless people being marooned in temporary housing for extended periods.
Project Roomkey and Inside Safe aren't solving the crisis in LAbecause there isn't enough housing for people to accessonce they're in the motels and hotels, said Annie Powers, an organizer with Union de Vecinos, a coalition of low-income tenants.
"Theoretically you get into one of these programs and then it'llput you on the path topermanent housing.However, it justdoesn't work that waybecause there isn't enough housing andbecause of issues around Section 8 vouchers," Powers said.
Before someone can afford to sign a lease, they usually must secure a federal housing voucher to supplement rent contributions –a processSens and others struggled with at hotel sites.
“I’m trying to get to the bottom of that," Bass said. For now, she said, she wants to encourage more landlords to accept the vouchers and "create a spirit" of property ownershelping to solve the crisis by getting people housed intheirapartments.
More people will also enter homelessness if the city's extended eviction moratorium is allowed to expire on March 31, advocates say.
In her plan, Bass said, she will fight unlawful evictions and try to "maximize resources for rental assistance." But it will take a City Council vote to extend the eviction moratorium, she said.
To Powers, preventing people from falling into homelessnessis "very simple."
"Just extend the moratorium on evictions permanently. That's it. The way to keep people in their homes is just to stop evictions from happening," she said.
'It's all bad choices'
Besides preventing evictions at a large scale, Powers said, the city needs to "open up" vacant apartments. Many apartments are sitting empty because they're priced too high, shutting people out of housing, she said.
On Feb.10,Bass issued her third executive order on homelessness, requesting a list of city-ownedproperties that are vacant, surplus or underused. After being assessed, properties on the list can be turnedinto housing.
But if city officials could have "regulationover the market in order open up those vacant apartments," a cascading effect of available privately ownedunits could lead to more people enteringhousing –permanent housing, not the motelrooms labeled as "housing"people are beingoffered,Powers said.
"Alot of it is just the language to make things look like they're different, but it'sa hotel room that feels like a jail versus the street versus an actual prison," Powers said. "It's all bad choices."
Contributing: Robert Hanashiro
