Los Angeles is at a crossroads on homelessness

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Mayor Karen Bass finds herself at a crossroads on one of the most ambitious promises she made as she rode into City Hall in 2022 — solving homelessness in Los Angeles. A report released this month by the city’s housing department estimated it would cost $21.7 billion to end homelessness in a decade.
Bass has been publicly tight-lipped about what she thinks of the report, which calls for massive investments in housing for the homeless.
But the mayor has three options before her, my colleagues Liam Dillon and Doug Smith report:
She could try to win over voters and other elected officials to help come up with the money, find an alternative plan that doesn’t carry such a hefty price tag or just continue down the current path and hope the housing crisis improves.
As Bass decides which path to take, a debate has already erupted among housing and homelessness experts over the feasibility of the city report and how to better serve the estimated 45,000 people who are homeless in L.A. Here’s a look at some of their arguments.
The price tag is a realistic accounting of past mistakes, supporters argue
Some experts say the report’s price tag reflects the reality of overcoming decades of budget cuts and inadequate funding for low-income housing and social services, my colleagues Liam and Doug report.
“In some ways, it’s an eye-popping dollar amount,” Margot Kushel, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco and director of the school’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, told Liam and Doug. “In other ways, it doesn’t seem that eye-popping to me for the scale of the problem.”
The city report calls for building or subsidizing nearly 60,000 units of housing for the homeless, which includes new supportive housing developments, rental assistance programs,and facilities for the elderly and severely mentally ill.
Kushel told The Times that the stakes for finding a solution to homelessness are particularly high. She worries that if more housing isn’t secured, the homeless will be criminalized for sleeping on streets after the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that cities can enforce restrictions on homeless encampments.
“I would rather live in a place that spent its money on allowing people to live in community with choice and autonomy over their lives,” Kushel said. “We seem to have an unending appetite to spend money on carceral settings.”
The report is a ‘nonstarter in terms of reality,’ critics say
Other experts said the report shows what’s not working with the city’s current strategies.
“All this stuff in this report is predicated on these status quo mechanisms that are just very inefficient and costly and slow,” Jason Ward, an economist and co-director of the Rand Center on Housing and Homelessness, told Liam and Doug.
To build the housing outlined in the report, state and federal governments would need to significantly step up their support, which is not a sure thing.
The city should instead focus on rental assistance programs, Dennis Culhane, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania who has researched homelessness in L.A., told Liam and Doug. These programs are less expensive and lessen the administrative costs and burden.
“There is a public appetite for effective solutions that can show real progress,” Culhane said. “That means it has to be done more quickly than happens under a new construction situation.”
But one of the biggest problems with the report is what it doesn’t include: how the most significant predictor of homelessness is the overall cost and availability of rental housing.
By ignoring the housing market, the report missed an opportunity to discuss crucial ways to stem the flow of people falling into homelessness, Ward said.
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He faced pressure to confess to murder when he was 15. Now a district attorney is fighting for his freedom. Lombardo Palacios confessed to murder following hours of interrogation that employed pressure tactics many experts now say are unreliable. Seventeen years later, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón has asked a court to set Palacios and his co-defendant free.
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Jillian Robertson writes: “Something that made me smile this week was playing in the WeHo Dodgeball Halloween tournament at Pan Pacific Rec Center.
“Our team dressed up as aliens and cheered for each other in made-up alien language, somewhere between Minion language and Teletubby babble. We may not have won the tournament, but we definitely had the most fun.”
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Today’s great photo is from staff photographer Robert Gauthier. After beating the Mets to reach the World Series, several Dodgers players wore clown masks designed by legendary L.A. artist Mister Cartoon.
“At first I thought I was seeing things, then I was like man that’s crazy,” Cartoon told The Times in an email. “I was watching live with my family and started to get a gang of calls and texts right when it was going down.”
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Ryan Fonseca, reporterDefne Karabatur, fellowAndrew Campa, Sunday reporterHunter Clauss, multiplatform editorChristian Orozco, assistant editorStephanie Chavez, deputy metro editorKarim Doumar, head of newsletters
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