Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti zeroed in on the city’s housing crisis, infrastructure and social justice issues as he outlined his “justice budget” this week in a State of the City speech.
The $11.1 billion
The city’s homelessness crisis took center stage in Garcetti's budget proposal with $1 billion in spending proposed, substantially more than the city has ever dedicated to the effort.
Among the city's plans is a pilot program to offer free rides on the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s rail and bus network to low-income residents and K-12 students starting next year, said the mayor, who chairs L.A. Metro's board.
“The state of our city is strong and bruised – bursting with joyous possibility, while crackling with sorrow,” Garcetti said. “If you ask me what defines LA in 2021, it’s what we are doing to become a city more just, more equal, more kind, more itself than we have ever given it the opportunity to be.”
In addition to rent relief and small business grants funded in the budget, infrastructure projects will bring 1 million new jobs, Garcetti said. Those projects include a new concourse and state-of-the-art cargo facility as part of Los Angeles International Airport’s $15 billion capital improvement program.
The city’s Department of Water and Power would also invest $8 billion in a program called Operation Next to increase the use of recycled water by expanding the Hyperion Treatment Plant.
The mayor's budget would also launch the largest basic income experiment in the U.S. by giving $1,000 of cash a month to 2,000 residents.
The same day that Garcetti proposed the largest expenditure on homelessness during his eight-year tenure, a federal judge ordered the city to house every homeless person on Skid Row, the long-time concentration of homeless people on the eastern side of downtown, by October.
Judge David O. Carter granted a preliminary injunction filed by the plaintiffs last week that orders the city and county to offer single women and unaccompanied children on Skid Row a place to stay within 90 days, help families within 120 days and offer housing or shelter to every homeless person on Skid Row by Oct. 18.
The
Though Skid Row may be the city's longest, and most well-known area with a concentrated homeless population, only 4,600, a fraction of the 41,290 people homeless at the beginning of 2020, are located there, according
It’s unclear how the judge’s order might apply to homeless people residing in the rest of the city.
The judge also ordered the city to place $1 billion in an escrow account, equal to what Garcetti had proposed for efforts across the city. The city doesn’t have that amount in hand to place in an escrow account because some of that would come from state or federal grants.
“While some may see this preliminary injunction as a kick in the shins, I choose to interpret this as a clarion call for the city and county to collaborate like never before,” said Councilmember Ridley-Thomas.
The number of homeless people in Los Angeles has continued to increase despite concerted efforts and funding from the city, Los Angeles County and the state Legislature. LAHSA officials said they were disappointed by the increase in homeless people in both the city and county in 2020.
LAHSA wrote in its June 2020 report that people the city has housed are staying housed, but new people affected by economic distress are falling into homelessness.
An estimated 82,955 people fell into homelessness during 2019 on a county-wide basis, and an estimated 52,686 people “self-resolved” out of homelessness — in addition to the 22,769 placed into housing through the homeless services system despite the tight housing market, according to LAHSA. Put another way, an average of 207 people exit homelessness every day while 227 people become homeless, the report states.
California State Auditor Elaine Howle's office in February produced
Los Angeles city voters approved a $1.2 billion Proposition HHH general obligation bond measure in 2016 to build housing, which is nearly tapped out; and county voters approved in March 2017 Measure H, a quarter-center sales tax to raise $355 million annually to fund prevention efforts and services for homeless people.
Most of the state's metro areas have passed similar measures and the state has approved tens of millions toward the effort, in addition to approving its own bonding program called "No Place Like Home" that won Bond Buyer's Deal of the Year in 2021, backed by a dedicated income tax surcharge that funds programs for mentally ill people.
The bonds fund supportive housing for mentally ill homeless people.
The $1 billion in Garcetti's budget proposal, partly achieved by tapping state and federal programs, is nearly seven times the $176 million he allocated in the 2017 budget when he also
The total includes $791 million to fund projects to help homeless residents, increase cleanups around shelters and expand programs aimed at keeping housed Angelenos from becoming homeless, and $160 million that was allocated for homelessness issues this fiscal year that has not been put to use.
“Ending homelessness is tough, tough work and not for the faint of heart, but our investments are building a movement and building our capacity to improve the lives of our unhoused neighbors,” Garcetti said.
His budget would earmark $362 million for 89 projects and 5,651 total housing units through Proposition HHH, nearly $200 million for the development of affordable housing, homelessness prevention, and eviction defense, $57 million for nine additional homeless outreach teams and 11 new regional storage facilities to store homeless people’s possessions, and $43 million for Project Roomkey.
The state launched its Homekey and Roomkey projects in 2020 as a response to the pandemic by turning hotel and motel rooms into housing units for homeless people.
The mayor’s proposed budget includes an expansion of Project Roomkey, which has allowed the city to rent hotel rooms for homeless people during the pandemic. Six new hotels will be opened with a combined 523 rooms, bringing the total to 1,450.
The City Council approved a motion in March authored by Ridley-Thomas for staff to report back with a detailed "Right to Housing’ plan that is due any day.
The Right to Housing program “scales up our response in prevention, interim housing, permanent housing and street engagement across the region,” Ridley-Thomas said. “At the national level, the Biden administration has acknowledged that a "right" to housing is the path forward to address our nation’s homelessness crisis. The same is true in Los Angeles. Enough is enough. It’s time to get to work.”
As the council negotiates the details of the budget leading toward a hoped-for approval by June 1, Ridley-Thomas said he plans to make sure the final budget advances the initial pillars of the Right to Housing program, “including more funding for homeless prevention, a dignified and responsive street strategy and interim and long-term housing to help individuals transition off the streets.”
The city needs a comprehensive strategy, sufficient ongoing resources and an enforceable obligation on government to act to address this moral crisis with the urgency and conviction that is warranted and “a billion dollars dedicated to this action takes us in the right direction,” Ridley-Thomas said.
The 2021-22 budget is bolstered by $777 million in relief funds from the American Rescue Plan President Biden signed in March.
Garcetti's plans for a kinder city would not defund the police. He proposed a 3% increase in funding to $1.76 billion for the Los Angeles Police Department.
The city has launched many social justice committees to deal with racism and he created a bureau to train officers in community policing that Police Chief Michael Moore said would move officers from a “containment and suppression" model to community policing.
“If you want to abolish the police you're talking to the wrong mayor,” Garcetti said. “And if you want to return to an ‘us and them’ mentality that made police an occupying force in some communities, you have come to the wrong place. When situations don’t need guns, let’s not send guns.”
