Sept. 22--Los Angeles elected leaders announced Tuesday that they will declare a "state of emergency" on the growing homelessness problem in the city and commit $100 million toward housing and other services for homeless people.
The proposal, which was presented at a City Hall press conference attended by City Council members and Mayor Eric Garcetti, coincides with a Garcetti administration proposal, issued late Monday, that aims to free up nearly $13 million in newly anticipated excess tax revenue for short-term housing initiatives.
If approved, the pair of initiatives could significantly increase the resources dedicated to tackling homelessness in a city where the majority of the 26,000 homeless people live on the streets.
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"It's not a skid row problem. It's a problem that's proliferated throughout the city," Councilman Gilbert Cedillo told The Times in an interview. He was joined by several council members at the press conference.
"If we want to be a great city that hosts the Olympics and shows itself off to the world," Cedillo said, "we shouldn't have 25,000 to 50,000 people sleeping on the streets."
Garcetti told reporters that city and county officials are tackling a "heartbreaking crisis" that has gripped L.A. for decades. "Today we're going to tackle it head-on," he said.
"This city has pushed this problem from neighborhood to neighborhood for too long, from bureaucracy to bureaucracy, pointing fingers," Garcetti added.
Council members offered few details about how the spending plan would work -- or what it would do. But Councilman Jose Huizar said it would guarantee that the city finds $100 million in its budget for homeless services next year. That number was selected, he said, because that's the amount city officials believe will be available for such programs.
"We're hearing ... we're getting more revenue than we anticipated," Huizar said. "We're in a better economic condition than we anticipated."
Cedillo told The Times he would rely on the city's policy analysts to identify funding sources for the initiative.
Fredy Ceja, a spokesman for Cedillo, said the emergency declaration would enable city leaders to fast-track building projects.
One activist voiced alarm that, during their hourlong news conference, neither Garcetti nor council members spelled out where they plan to get the $100 million.
"We believe that there is a state of emergency and the City Council should be treating it such, but it's worrisome and discouraging that the resources aren't identified up front," said Becky Dennison, co-director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, a group that advocates for low-income residents.
Dennison also said she wants a guarantee that the city will be committing $100 million from its revenue and not relying on money from state or federal government sources.
The money, if approved, would be directed to the council's housing committee, with committee members deciding how to spend it on projects including long-term housing and an expansion of shelter capacity, Ceja said.
Councilman Mike Bonin, who represents the Venice area, described L.A.'s response so far to growing homelessness as a "collective failure of every level of government to deal with what has been a homeless crisis for generations and is exploding and exacerbating now."
Garcetti's proposal, detailed in a letter sent to City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana, aims to complement the work of the City Council, providing a package of more immediate funding that is available, mayoral spokeswoman Connie Llanos said.
In the letter, Garcetti calls on Santana, the city's top budget advisor, to recommend more than $10 million in short-term rental subsidies, with just over half of the funds dedicated to housing homeless veterans.
The remainder, about $2.6 million, would go toward other services including the development of regional storage facilities and the opening of shelters one month earlier than planned.
Figures released this year show that overall homelessness in the city has risen 12% since 2013, when Garcetti took office.
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Retired UCLA law professor Gary Blasi said he welcomed Garcetti's proposal.
"Overall, increasing resources are good," Blasi said. But he cautioned that the estimates provided by Garcetti "didn't compute" in L.A.'s expensive real estate market, such as a $5-million allocation that was touted as potentially providing short-term housing for 1,000 people.
He added: "The devil is in the details."
During the press conference, Garcetti also referred to a three-part plan he plans to release later this year to tackle rising homelessness. He disclosed few details about the plan, but said that it would involve expanding a system used by the city and county for tracking the homeless; increase the number of regional service centers for people who live on the streets; and prevent Angelenos from becoming homeless in the first place.
Tuesday's announcement comes five months after Santana released a report estimating that L.A. spends more than $100 million annually on issues stemming from homelessness. A major share of those costs were absorbed by the LAPD. But other agencies -- including those that oversee parks, libraries, street maintenance and paramedic services -- also are contending with the issue, the report said.
In a survey, employees in the city's 73 libraries estimated they had an average of 680 to 780 homeless patrons each day, according to Santana's report. Those workers have been trying to preserve the rights of the homeless to use their facilities while also arranging for security to deal with "violent patrons," Santana said in April.
"[Library] leadership stated that they welcomed all library patrons, including the homeless, but had recently struggled with a perceived increase in violent or unruly incidents related to patrons who appeared to be both homeless and mentally ill -- and an increase in complaints about homeless patrons from other library users," he wrote.
"We're spending hundreds of millions of dollars responding to this problem instead of spending money it will take to solve the problem," said Councilman Paul Krekorian, chairman of the council's Budget and Finance Committee.
Cedillo also said he wants the council to look at providing home builders relief from the state's environmental law, which is frequently used by foes of development to challenge residential projects. One possibility, he said, would be to increase the size of projects that are not governed by that law.
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UPDATE
11:30 a.m.: This post was updated with additional comments and reaction to the proposals, as well as more background on the issue.
10:11 a.m.: This post was updated with the announcement from the press conference.
This story was origianlly posted at 4:30 a.m.
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