LA City, County receive $60 million to battle homeless crisis
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is celebrating after receiving $60 million from the federal government to fund her efforts to end the homeless crisis in not only the city but the entire county.
"It is very, very nice to begin my day with a $60 million check," said Bass.
The incoming head of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Va Lecia Adams Kellum said the federal grant will be used in a variety of ways in to help the unhoused.
"The $60 million will go to outreach," she said. "Funding of motels and immediate shelter. That's part of the model and it will fund that as well and permanent housing."
In the past month, Bass has amassed about $110 million to fight the homeless crisis: $60 million from the federal government and $50 million from the L.A. City Council. The mayor acknowledged that a lot of money has been thrown at this crisis in the past with little results, but she says her administration is on a different path.
"First of all, what I think is different is the alliance and how we are all functioning together and we understand we have to be in lockstep," she said. "The city builds, the county provides services, walking together is really critical."
Bass declared a state of emergency on the homeless crisis and the county followed suit. The mayor has had some early success clearing encampments in Venice and Hollywood, where hundreds of people have been placed in housing. This week, outreach teams with Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System worked to clear another encampment at the intersection of 87th Street and Western Avenue.
Director Veronica Lewis and her team helped the people living in tents on the corner find housing.
"My team, they did something that's a little bit different from the rest of the Inside Safe," she said. "Not only did we move them inside, my wrap-around housing team is going to pay to move them into permanent housing and enroll them into all the programs."
Even with tens of millions of dollars in funding, many major hurdles remain in the path of solving the homeless crisis. Among the biggest challenges are mental health and drug use. Bass has called on the federal government to play a bigger role.
"We do not have the infrastructure for drug treatment that we need to have," she said. "And drug treatment cannot be collapsed into mental health. We have to have those services to succeed long-term."
Bass and service providers emphasize how complicated it is to keep people housed once they're off the streets. Mental health services and job training were listed as the top priorities to give people the skills and tools to earn an income to keep them from losing their homes again.
