By Samuel Miller
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America and Oceania
LOS ANGELES, United States of America — The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday declared a State of Emergency on homelessness, calling for $100 million to help address the growing crisis. The West Coast city is the first in the country to declare a State of Emergency over the growing number of street dwellers.
According to an LA Times report, the number of homeless people living on the city’s streets has grown by 12 percent since 2013.
City Council President Herb Wesson, along with members of the council’s Homelessness and Poverty Committee, and Mayor Eric Garcetti, announced the plan during a news conference outside City Hall, as homeless people dozed nearby on a lawn.
“This city has pushed this problem from neighborhood to neighborhood for too long, from bureaucracy to bureaucracy,” Mayor Garcetti said. “Every single day we come to work, we see folks lying on this grass, a symbol of our city’s intense crisis.”
Los Angeles has one of the largest unsheltered populations in the country, and more than an estimated 25,000 homeless residents. Some of those men and women live on the city’s infamous Skid Row, a makeshift camp on public sidewalks that stretches for blocks.
Gary Blasi, a Professor Emeritus at the UCLA School of Law, said the promise to fund new housing and services for the homeless people in L.A. was a positive step for a city government that has recently been preoccupied with empowering police to crack down on encampments.
“If it is purely symbolic, that will be bad,” Professor Blasi said. “But at least people are engaging in a conversation about how to solve the problem, instead of just moving it around the city.”
In addition to the one-time $100 million funding proposed by the council, Mayor Garcetti is calling for an annual $100 million to fund permanent housing for the homeless and to set up a foundation dedicated to the issue.
In the short term, Mayor Garcetti wants $13 million in emergency funding to grow homeless services and housing, most of which would be allocated in the form of subsidies. “If we can lift up those in need, and pick up those left behind, then we can live up to the best of our ideals,” Garcetti said.
Tuesday’s announcement by Mayor Garcetti was also marked by evidence of the confused tactics critics say have hindered an effective city response to a growing challenge.
Council members haven’t identified the sources for all of the money or how it would be used. Meanwhile, the mayor has yet to release a sweeping plan, now weeks overdue, he says he is crafting to end homelessness. Late in July, Garcetti said in a speech that his office was preparing a three-part “battle plan” for what he dubbed a “war on homelessness here in Los Angeles.”
For more information, please see:
BBC News — Los Angeles: $100m plan to tackle homeless ’emergency’ – 23 September 2105
CNN — Los Angeles declares ‘state of emergency’ on homelessness – 23 September 2015
Al-Jazeera America — Los Angeles declares homelessness state of emergency – 22 September 2015
