Rick Caruso and Karen Bass locked in tight LA mayoral race less than 3 weeks before election

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- With voting in the Los Angeles mayor's race set to end in less than three weeks, a new poll from the Southern California News Group of likely voters found Rick Caruso and Karen Bass are in a tight race: 39.8% to 36.8%, respectively, which is within the margin of error.

"We are neck and neck, so every vote counts," Caruso said on Wednesday while at a campaign event in Van Nuys.

Meanwhile, the Bass campaign told Eyewitness News: "The $80 million and counting Rick Caruso has spent attacking Congresswoman Bass has moved this race to a dead heat. In these final days, our job is to marshal resources to remind voters that this is a choice between an anti-choice republican billionaire who only looks out for his friends and a pro-choice democrat who's always on the people's side."

"Rick Caruso really held his fire over the summer and is now having a major media and street-level push, and Karen Bass is out in the community and pushing here issues," said Raphe Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State Los Angeles. "But he is able to overwhelm her message to some degree. Bass has a very strong base among Democratic voters who are likely to vote and the real key for Caruso is can he break into that castle. That's where her campaign resides."

If elected, Caruso has promised 30,000 beds for the homeless in his first 300 days in office. On Wednesday, ABC7 got a glimpse of what that might look like: modular homes.

The company, Boxabl. builds one such home every 90 minutes at $60,000 dollars a unit. A Boxabl unit located in the backyard of a Van Nuys home is currently rented by a college student; Caruso says this type of living arrangement would also address the housing crisis.

"They're innovative," said Caruso. "The quality of construction is really great. The space layout is great and. What they've done is, they've actually hinged it so it collapses down so you can ship it at a reduce cost. And, he's got an assembly line. He's taking what you do with an automobile line to build it and is doing these homes."

Caruso prefers the Boxabl model to tiny homes because he says the units have dignity, feel like an actual home and cost much less than what the city of Los Angeles is currently paying, as much as $700,000 a unit.