Due to the estimated 40,000 homeless people, LA taps hotel rooms

According to Karen Bass, the city of Los Angeles’s new mayor, her administration will begin relocating homeless people from tent cities into hotel and motel rooms on Tuesday.

People won’t be forced to move, but sanitation teams will be on hand to clean up places after people have departed, Bass said, adding that her proposal to shift homeless people into rooms immediately won’t “address everybody, but it is going to address, hopefully, a considerable percentage.”

“However, this is not using coercion. This is not issuing citations or locking people up. According to her, this means relocating people from tents to hotels or motels.

Bass proclaimed a state of urgency on homelessness on her first day in office as mayor of Los Angeles.

She committed to housing people and building more homes so locals could notice a meaningful difference.

Despite spending billions on programs to end homelessness, including $1.2 billion in the current city budget, there hasn’t been any noticeable change.

In her first year in office, Democratic former congresswoman Bass plans to place nearly 17,000 homeless persons in housing through a combination of temporary and long-term institutions.

In Los Angeles, there are about 40,000 homeless persons.

People sleeping outdoors on sidewalks and under overpasses, living in tents and automobiles, and being homeless is very evident throughout California.

The goal, according to Bass, is to persuade individuals to stay inside.

There are many causes of homelessness, such as mental illness, addiction, and lack of employment.

At the beginning of the epidemic in 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom first proposed the notion of housing homeless people in motels and hotel rooms.

Since then, he has urged local governments to turn hotels and other structures into homes for the homeless.

The usage of hotel rooms, where people can have their bathroom and away from the chaos of overcrowded shelters, has been welcomed by advocates for the homeless.

However, they have denounced “sweeps” of encampments, which force people to leave their things behind when no solid hotel room offer has been made.

Todd questioned Bass on how to measure the success of her efforts to end homelessness.

“Encampments should be greatly reduced, if not completely abolished, and housing should be being built, underway, at a much faster speed,” she said. And, indeed, there shouldn’t be 40,000 people without housing.