In the six months since she became Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass has made great strides in changing the public conversation about homelessness.
With a steady diet of leadership, a trio of executive directives, the Inside Safe strategy to clear tent encampments and the “lock arms” catchphrase, Bass has injected a sense of urgency into addressing the city’s most pressing physical and moral crisis.
But is Los Angeles actually making headway in shrinking the number of people on the streets? During a lengthy and detailed briefing in City Hall last week, Bass and her top homelessness deputies cited a raft of programs and data points. The big number, according to a handout, is that 14,381 people have been housed since Bass took office on Dec. 12, 2022.
But hold the applause, because that tells only part of the story, and it doesn’t mean that the homeless population in the city has actually shrunk by 14,381 or anything close to it.
Anyone who has followed efforts to combat homelessness in recent years knows that a couple overarching figures are key:
The first is the estimated count of people experiencing homelessness in the city. According to last year’s Greater L.A. Homeless Count, that was 41,980.
Then there is the number tied to, in effect, a bathtub filling quicker than it can be bailed out. A couple years ago, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority found that while 207 people in the region were being housed each day, another 227 were falling into homelessness.
So during the event I asked Bass point-blank if L.A. is seeing fewer unhoused people.
“I think what we can say very comfortably is that we have been clearing encampments, getting people housed, and the encampments have not repopulated,” Bass replied.
She’s right and that is a great achievement, but it doesn’t come close to answering if L.A. is flipping the numbers.
A similar question was posed a few minutes later, to which La Vecia Adams Kellum, the new CEO of LAHSA, responded, “We don’t have the numbers updated, but we know the inflow is great.”
Bass followed up by describing another facet of addressing homelessness: working to prevent people from losing housing in the first place, in this case by striving to inform renters about post-COVID protections that prevent them from being evicted.
That, too, is a worthy effort, but it still doesn’t tell Angelenos the one thing that everyone wants to know: With all the money, energy and teamwork, is L.A. reducing its unhoused population?
Team Bass had a lot of impressive stats: 1,323 people have been housed through 19 Inside Safe operations; and 10,049 people were moved into interim housing from December 2022 through May 2023, which is 2,195 more than in the same period the previous year, when Eric Garcetti was mayor.
Bass also detailed approvals for some affordable housing projects that now come in an average of 37 days, compared with six months before she was inaugurated.
But the counter is that for all the positive stats, you still don’t have to look far to see sprawling encampments, people living in filth and impassable sidewalks. Everyone is willing to give the new mayor time to address problems that mushroomed during the old mayor’s tenure, but people want to see progress. It took L.A. decades to get to this point, and it’s foolish to expect widespread change after six months.
Bass has been notably open and transparent about her team’s work on the crisis. In fact, when things have gone so wrong for so long perhaps the biggest early step is determining just how big a lemon you bought. Bass made reference to that in her opening remarks on Tuesday.
“We have a broken system, but we believe now that it’s under repair,” she said. “Fortunately we have new leadership at LAHSA. We have found multiple weaknesses in the system, and in our work we’re trying to address that.”
This is a curious moment in the city. Bass has altered the conversation, and during the recent city budget process she got all of the $1.3 billion she asked for to fight homelessness.
But there also is potentially a gloomy forecast ahead.
In the coming weeks, LAHSA is expected to reveal the results of the homelessness count that took place in January. This occurred before Bass had any chance to affect change, but if the number rises above 41,980, then the public may may question if government can actually deliver.
Give Bass credit for what she has achieved. But on this crisis issue, L.A. is still much closer to the starting line than running through the finish tape.
