Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilmembers Meet with State Leaders Today to Continue Delivering for Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES – Mayor Karen Bass today announced that 3,365 emergency housing vouchers have been used to bring unhoused Angelenos into permanent housing, which comes after Mayor Bass and the Los Angeles City Council made a direct effort to expand the capacity of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) by increasing staff and reorienting priorities. The Mayor also announced today that Los Angeles successfully secured its seventh Homekey Round 3 grant with nearly $7.2 million in new funding for interim housing, bringing a total of 367 new units funded for a total of $105.8 million.
Today, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilmembers are in Sacramento to share and lift up the impact of investments thus far in the work to confront the homelessness crisis. Their trip will build on that momentum by working to secure critical state funding and flexibility as Los Angeles continues to urgently confront the homelessness crisis, build more housing, and advocate for expedited reimbursements to help address past City emergencies like COVID-19 and the storm earlier this month.
“Our priority always has to be to save lives, and when we work together, across all levels of government, we can make real progress. With more than 40,000 unhoused Angelenos on our streets, it was unacceptable that we had voucher holders unable to come inside,” said Mayor Bass. “In January of last year, we worked with HACLA to increase its capacity and I’m glad that we are now at full voucher utilization. We cannot standby and allow business as usual to kill unhoused Angelenos.”
“The actions we’ve taken in Council, working closely with the Mayor, have enabled us to move thousands of unhoused Angelenos into both interim shelter and permanent housing,” said Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian. “We’re here in Sacramento to secure the support we need so that we can expand on proven programs for housing the unhoused, and build more affordable housing for working Angelenos.”
“When I took over as Chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee, Emergency Housing Vouchers granted to the City of Los Angeles were in danger of going unused, something that is unacceptable in our current crisis,” said Councilmember Nithya Raman, Chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee. “This is why I insisted on working closely with HACLA in the Committee, setting a clear goal of 100% utilization, and working in partnership with HACLA staff to ensure that we were able to successfully meet that goal.”
The City of Los Angeles, in partnership with Hope the Mission, was awarded $7,158,774 to repurpose an existing motel into a 22-unit interim housing community to serve youth experiencing or at risk of homelessness last week. Los Angeles has secured seven awards for the Los Angeles Housing Department and HACLA totaling $105.8 million. This funding will deliver a combined 367 interim and permanent housing units for people experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness. The state also announced funding for the County of Los Angeles outside of the city limits, which will provide an additional 337 units of housing.
Mayor Bass continued: “These state funds are absolutely vital to our efforts to bring Angelenos inside. I want to again thank the Newsom administration for their continued partnership to address the homelessness crisis. We will continue to call on our federal and state partners to increase our voucher allocation and other resources to bring more people inside.”
“It’s imperative that we take advantage of every state and federal resource on the table and leave no rock unturned,” said Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, Chair of the City Council's Budget, Finance and Innovation Committee. “We must continue the ‘yes and’ approach as well as ensure that our departments can effectively spend the grant money we receive.”
Last week, Mayor Bass joined Senator Alex Padilla and Congressman Ted Lieu to announce the Housing for All Act which would significantly increase the number of federally funded housing vouchers allocated to Los Angeles.