Watch: Mayor Karen Bass gives an update on city’s efforts to combat homelessness, offers ideas for progress

Roughly 150 community members gathered at Ronald Deaton Civic Auditorium at LAPD headquarters in downtown LA on Wednesday, November 13 for "L.A. Confronts Homelessness: Are we on the right track?" a discussion between Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Jim Newton, the editor of policy magazine UCLA Blueprint.

At last count, the city of Los Angeles has more than 45,000 individuals who are homeless, two-thirds of whom are unsheltered, and the county of Los Angeles has more than 75,000 homeless individuals. It has been reported that numbers are down for the first time since 2018 and has been attributed to recent cooperation between the city and county to move people from encampments and vehicles to temporary housing.

Newton opened the discussion by asking the mayor to localize the results of the national election that took place on November 5, 2024.

While expressing concerns that the department of Housing and Urban Development, the federal agency responsible for low-income and community housing needs, may be dismantled as prescribed in the far-right policy agenda Project 2025, the mayor said that housing is a national crisis, and even if the department is dismantled, many of the programs would likely be kept but be administered from other federal agencies.

She also said her office is doing everything in its power to get all federal funding allocated to the city in the next two months before the administration transition, given anticipated policy changes that may be unfavorable to Los Angeles.

Bass, who currently chairs the U.S. Conference of Mayors' task force on homelessness, referenced her nearly twelve years in Congress and six years in the California Assembly as evidence of her experience working on a bipartisan basis to get things done.

She pointed out that sometimes deregulation can be positive.

"I'm focused on getting people off the street, but also on trying to change dysfunction in the system," Bass said.

As one example of a regulatory obstacle to housing individuals, she cited that veterans often cannot get housing vouchers because they earn too much income from their veterans' benefits.

"Little attention is paid to rules and regulations that are roadblocks to getting people housed," she said.

The mayor emphasized the need for more continuous services - medical, mental health and otherwise - for those given temporary housing through the Inside Safe program, and that service providers, while doing a great job, are overwhelmed. She also acknowledged UCLA's commitment to street medicine through the UCLA Health Homeless Healthcare Collaborative, or HHC, and was able to tour a HHC van before the event.

She also said that anyone who had to spend five nights on the street would realize the toll it takes on a person's mental health.

"If services were more focused and continuous, people would stay in housing," Bass said. "We have to do better."

And while acknowledging the value of Measure A passing on November 5 - a permanent half-cent sales tax to combat homelessness that replaced Measure H's quarter-cent tax that was set to expire in 2027 - she said that it took 30 years for Los Angeles to triple the numbers of unhoused in Los Angeles, and it will take a lot more money and time to solve the problem.

"It's not normal to have tents on the street. It took 30 years to get here. It's not going to take just two years," she said.

Some concrete ideas that the mayor mentioned were recruiting as case workers social work students who are earning hours toward their licenses in mental health or related health fields as well as working with landlords to offer housing to veterans with housing vouchers.

Bass also noted that domestic violence is one of the leading causes of women and children becoming homeless and that the city spends much more addressing homelessness through fire, police and emergency room services than it would by placing people in housing and offering them wraparound services.

"If we are bringing people into housing, the question is, are they staying there?" she said. "I want to solve homelessness, not just manage it."

She said she would like to have UCLA or other external groups with expertise to study the city to see how it spends its money throughout different departments to alleviate poverty, to provide metrics to see if programs are being run most effectively to prevent homelessness.

The event was sponsored by UCLA Blueprint, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA Health, UCLA Government and Community Relations and the nonprofit news organization CalMatters.

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