(BrightPress.org) – Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) wants a record $1.3 billion to address the homeless crisis sprawling across California’s largest city. After winning her November election, she naively presumed that simply throwing gobs of taxpayer money at a problem will solve it, in typical Democratic fashion. The first black woman mayor also prefers calling the homeless “the unhoused,” as if that makes any sense.
She made the remarks during an annual speech given just four months into her tenure as mayor. Her plan includes converting hotels or motels into housing, as well as any other properties the city controls and could fit the purpose. Additionally, she plans to include mental health and addiction treatment as part and parcel of the program which she’s calling “Inside Safe.” Over one thousand people have enrolled in the program so far, which promises temporary to permanent housing solutions.
Democratic Governor Gavin Newsome claimed he will bring 500 units to the city to be used as temporary housing, in addition to $1 billion in state grants. Even the Biden administration is involved, having spent $200 million in taxpayer funds specifically to address the crisis. What’s another billion or two?
Speaking in the City Council chambers, Bass starry-eyed and full of naive promises spoke of “a clearer path to a new Los Angeles.” The city has been spending billions on homeless programs for years now, and the situation has only gotten worse. Previous Mayor Eric Garcetti spent almost a billion in 2021.
The crisis continues with homeless encampments and trailers littering the city. They gather under overpasses and bridges which provide some shelter. An estimate of just how many people are living ‘unhoused’ in LA yielded a count of forty-thousand people. Roughly half are addicts, a third have severe mental health problems, and every day about five of them die on the streets.
Bass wants her budget to hire more cops, social workers, and psychologists to respond to the problem. LA’s police force is at historically low levels not seen since 2002. Bass also anticipates social workers can respond to emergency calls where police aren’t required. Karen should go on a few of these calls to get a sense of how successful her ideas are in practice.
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