Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass unveiled her $13 billion budget proposal for 2023–2024 on April 18, the first of her tenure.
The budget prioritizes the city’s sprawling homelessness problem with a record-high $1.3 billion allocated for more housing, purchasing hotels and motels, substance abuse treatment beds, and establishing a new agency of homeless solutions in her office. The new fiscal year begins on July 1.
The last homeless count in 2022 recorded nearly 42,000 homeless people living on the streets of Los Angeles, up almost 2 percent since 2020. About five homeless people die every day across the county, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
“We’re hopeful, but we want to reserve judgment and wait and see how it goes,” Jennifer Windh, founder of Unsafe Streets—a local think tank that tracks deaths caused by homeless people in Los Angeles since 2022—told The Epoch Times. “Obviously, residents of LA, people who care about public safety, have been disappointed a lot of times before. We’ve mostly seen things continue to get worse.”
“What’s being done to make sure people start treatment so that they don’t just go inside and overdose or attack other people in the building because their psychosis is still untreated?” she asked.
Countywide, 27 percent of the homeless reported long-term substance abuse and 25 percent had serious mental illness, according to a 2022 report by the Los Angeles Centers for Alcohol and Drug Abuse.
Rev. Andy Bales, CEO of the Union Rescue Mission—a faith-based Skid Row housing provider with wraparound services for the homeless—told The Epoch Times that Bass “mentioned recovery in her speech, as well as the unfortunate overdose deaths.”
“So, I believe she’s going to be making changes to the housing,” he said.
Bales said that in one-on-one conversations with Bass, she promised to fund faith-based nonprofits that offer services to the homeless, but it isn’t outlined in the budget. Faith-based nonprofits currently aren’t eligible to receive public funding in the city, he said.
Bales added that without additional addiction recovery services and mental health services, building more housing alone will not solve the issue.
Venice Beach resident Soledad Ursua—who was chased by a homeless woman who lived in an RV parked outside of her neighbor’s house after asking her to move—told The Epoch Times she’s become used to experiences like this living in Los Angeles and is worried the new record-high budget allocation for homelessness will place a burden on taxpayers.
“They’re never going to fix the issue because they refuse to call it what it is,” she said. “This is a crisis of drug addiction and mental illness.”
Roxanne Hoge, spokesperson for the Los Angeles GOP, told The Epoch Times that this crisis is “not a partisan issue” and doesn’t just impact homeless people, but the everyday Angeleno who can’t take their kids to the park because of dangerous encampments and drug dealing.
In the Budget
Bass, who was elected in November 2022, faces a visible challenge in Los Angeles, with homelessness evident in virtually every neighborhood. However, she asserts her approach will be successful.“We are removing the barriers that have been in place for far too long,” Bass said during her April 17 State of the City speech at City Hall. “We have finally dispelled the myth that people do not want to come inside.”
Bass said Gov. Gavin Newsom has also pledged to provide 500 units of temporary housing to the city, and the Biden administration has sent more than $200 million in funding for homeless programs to both the city and county this year.
Outlined in the mayor’s budget to combat the crisis is $250 million to expand the Inside Safe initiative, which launched in late December 2022. Earlier that month, she declared a local state of emergency to bring in additional state and federal funds to get people off the streets and into interim housing.
So far, more than 1,000 homeless people have accepted Inside Safe vouchers across the city to move into hotels and motels since the program launched. However, in Bass’s speech, she said that nearly 2,000 housing vouchers are going unused due to red tape in the process.
Bass said she is adding “emergency staff to the housing authority to accelerate the voucher process.”
New permanent supportive housing units are also being prepared for emergency use in 3,300 existing city-owned properties, and 500 tiny homes funded by the state are being prepared. Bass also plans to use $40 million to acquire more hotels and motels.
The budget will further utilize Proposition HHH, with $266 million in investments, to create 4,500 new units. Proposition HHH is a $1.2 billion bond passed by voters in 2016 to build 10,000 units of housing in 10 years.
Measure ULA, a new policy passed by voters in the last general election, introduces a transfer tax of 4 percent on the sale of properties valued over $5 million, and 5.5 percent on properties valued over $10 million. The budget proposed by Bass includes an allocation of $150 million from the projected total collections of Measure ULA, which went into effect on April 1.
A smaller portion of Bass’s budget, about $24 million, will be used for substance abuse treatment beds for Inside Safe residents.
And $4 million will be allocated toward the formation of four medical teams to provide health care services to 5,600 homeless individuals, according to the budget summary. Half of this funding has been secured through a Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention grant.
The mayor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment by press deadline.
