L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said her administration is succeeding at moving unhoused Angelenos off the streets under her signature homelessness program Inside Safe — but they’re still addressing roadblocks to getting people from shelters to permanent housing.
At a Wednesday press briefing on homelessness, Bass said by the end of her first 100 days in office next week, more than 1,000 people living in encampments will have accepted offers of temporary shelter, such as a stay in a hotel room.
But Bass acknowledged that after people move into hotels, they struggle to find a permanent home. So far, Inside Safe has placed only 62 people into permanent supportive housing.
Bass said the city’s housing authority has hired 17 new contract staffers in order to speed up housing voucher approvals for people waiting to move into permanent housing.
“Nothing drives us crazy more than to know that there are vacancies, and we have people ready, but because of the bureaucracy, we can't get there,” Bass said.
Bass said early efforts to move people indoors through Inside Safe — which has rolled out to 13 different parts of the city so far — have shown that unhoused residents are willing to leave encampments if they’re offered a stable place to stay.
“I believe in these 100 days we have disproven that people do not want to leave the streets,” Bass said. “That's really important because I think a lot of Angelenos believed that those people were there because they want to be there and they're never going to leave.”
But with L.A. County’s COVID-19 eviction protections set to expire at the end of the month, Bass said she is “very, very worried that we're going to see another spike in homelessness.”
She said the city will be launching a campaign to make sure tenants know about new renters’ rights recently passed by L.A.’s city council.
