LA City Council Approves Evaluation of Creating a Department Of Homelessness

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously 13-0 to begin evaluating the creation of a Department of Homelessness on Tuesday, to better centralize overseeing homeless initiatives in the city.

In recent years, the homeless situation in LA and LA County has grown worse. According to Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) homeless counts, the 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count study specifically found that there were an estimated 75,518 homeless people in Los Angeles County, up from 69,144 last year, with a total of 46,260 in the city, up from roughly 42,000 in 2022.

In addition, money and quality concerns have remained a major issue. Programs, such as Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program, have been major failures, with the city paying over $65 million just to permanently house well under 300 people. Last month, her newest program was also blasted for essentially being just a way of asking richer residents to help fund homeless endeavors. At the state level, Governor Gavin Newsom has even blamed local governments for not tracking how billions of dollars were spent and called for more oversight on local programs, such as Los Angeles’.

Faced with more homeless people, more questions over homeless spending, and very few people being housed or helped out of chronic homeless, the L.A. City Council decided to change things up and create an entire department devoted to homelessness. With a $2.2 million audit by a third party currently going on and looking into homeless programs in the city, Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez backed a motion looking into how a homeless department could be set up in the city to centralize assisting homeless Angelinos.

“As Los Angeles continues to grapple with the growing numbers of homeless individuals, we’ve seen repeated headlines reflecting millions of dollars unaccounted for born out of programs being managed by political offices or across multiple departments,” said Rodriguez during the City Council meeting on Tuesday. “The homelessness crisis in Los Angeles has made it necessary to create a centralized department with a singular focus that maximizes taxpayer dollars. Working with urgency shouldn’t equate to an abandonment of transparency, we must stretch our resources to aid the most people out of homelessness and clean up our city for Angelenos and business owners that are suffering with the consequences of our current environment.”

At the meeting on Tuesday, the motion was read out, making clear what the parameters of what a new Department would look like and  how best to look into such a creation of a department.

“Within this system, determined efforts to evaluate city-funded homelessness programs often run aground, as the providers of services produce irregular and imprecise reporting on contractually-obligated metrics and outcomes,” read the motion.

Few objections were made to the motion on Tuesday because of the numerous failures in LA in the past concerning homelessness, passing in a unanimous 13-0 vote.

A possible new department in LA

Critics told the Globe Wednesday that while more oversight and a single department were positive steps, funding and spending at the proposed Department of Homelessness would need to be kept tight for it to even remotely succeed.

“For this to work, you need to tackle way more than just housing,” homeless researcher Hannah Kyle told the Globe. “First thing you need to do is not make it housing centric, but drug centric. Get drug tests on anyone homeless who wants housing or job assistance. If they are positive, make it clear that they need immediate treatment to be considered for housing. No drugs? Great, they get some form of housing but with the caveat that it isn’t a free ride and that they need to go for a job asap. Things like health care and food can also be taken care of, but again, they need to keep up being clean and need to be actively searching for work.”

“For those testing positive, they need to get clean before they get any help. This needs to be a hard line in the sand. The most successful programs out there have had becoming and staying clean the central pillar of their assistance. Even with alcohol. Those drugs are not “something to help them cope or get by”. They’re making things worse for everyone.”

“This Department of Homelessness. They want to be more efficient, stop wasteful spending and that’s great if they do that. But for LA to really improve, they need hardline rules. And they can even do the Hawaii thing and offer a bus or plane ticket out of the city should they so choose. They put up hardline rules, and you can bet that a lot of homeless people will take them up on that offer.”

“Oh, and the Department needs to focus on removing encampments too. LA needs to start going with what is effective and helpful towards people. The current compassionate system isn’t working, and LA has a real chance at change if the Department of Homelessness puts in that hard line. But knowing LA, they probably won’t do it. But we need to make them try.”

The report on how to best create a Department of Homelessness is due to come out later this year.