Mayor Karen Bass houses 945 homeless people in first 100 days in office under Inside Safe program
In that same period, 3,873 unhoused people are now indoors through a variety of programs.
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- After 100 days in office, the Karen Bass administration says they have housed 945 people under Inside Safe, the mayor's encampment-to-temporary shelter program.
In that same period, 3,873 unhoused people are now indoors through a variety of programs, some of which were already in place prior to Bass being sworn in.
"I would like for it to be moving much quicker," Bass told Eyewitness News.
The mayor campaigned on housing 17,000 people in her first year and she may still get there, but admits more needs to be done to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.
"That's certainly been one of the weaknesses of 100 days, and we will really kick that into high gear in the next 100 days," she said. "So the city council acted and they passed tenant protections. My fear is that tenants won't know they have those protections. We had the housing department seek out notices to everyone who has rental assistance and we're getting ready to contract out for advertising."
The last homeless count found the city of Los Angeles had over 42,000 homeless people. Under Inside Safe, 15 encampments have been cleared and have not returned.
The homeless have been moved to motels, but finding affordable motel rooms has been a challenge and some unhoused people have been moved far from their encampments and have had to change motels multiple times.
"We did find the conditions deficient and so we gave people a choice of a couple of places to go," said Bass. "I don't like the idea of moving people around, but if we did have an opportunity of moving them closer to where their encampment was, we want to do that."
Bass said there are hundreds of available units of permanent housing, but because of all of the red tape imposed by government, which she's working to remove, her administration can't move everyone who's ready.
Plus, not everyone's ready to live on their own, which highlights another issue slowing the progress of housing the homeless: the city and county's weak drug treatment and mental health infrastructure.
"Some people just need to be housed permanently because they are that ill and not going to get well," said Bass. "That's a very small number, but we need that small number to be cared for and not die on the streets."
Bass praised Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposed $3 billion bond measure asking voters to fund behavioral health based housing and treatment facilities throughout California.
On the topic of Metro safety, where 21 people have died on trains and buses this year (which most were from apparent drug overdoses and the total number of people who died on Metro all year) Bass said it all goes back to getting people into proper housing.
"Why don't people feel safe? It's because of the unhoused situation on Metro and it's because of people suffering from various illnesses acting them out on Metro," she said. "So we have to get the folks out of metro into housing into and supportive services. One of the things that's challenging about Metro is law enforcement. There's three different agencies that manage Metro so you have the sheriff, LAPD, and Long Beach Police Department, and each agency has a different approach so that's something we're looking at as well."
Although Bass' focus during her first 100 days in office has been on homelessness, the mayor maintains she is not ignoring all the other issues facing the city.
"We need to deal with all the potholes that are being caused by all of this rain," she said. "I've talked to my deputy mayor for infrastructure and we're going to be on the potholes right away. I'm very concerned about the port down 40%, that's huge to our local economy. I'm worried about the pending strike from the writer's guild and the [LAUSD] strike we're dealing with today."
