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Black History Month 2025

Opinion: Inside Safe plan must double down in addressing root causes of homelessness

Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles who proposed the Inside Safe plan, is pictured. (Jeremy Chen/Assistant Photo editor)

By Tucker Waters

May 2, 2023 9:00 p.m.

Karen Bass spent over a year campaigning to run Los Angeles, claiming to be the only candidate with the experience and determination to address the soaring population of Angelenos experiencing homelessness.

Now as mayor, it’s time to see if she can pull it off.

Bass’ Inside Safe plan first took shape in an executive directive last December, which focused on decreasing homeless encampments by rapidly expanding the amount of interim and permanent housing available to unhoused Angelenos. The program makes use of hotels and motels leased by the city to temporarily house and support those currently living in encampments.

Inside Safe has consequences beyond LA – its impacts will shape how homelessness is discussed nationally and addressed by other cities.

Bass has the opportunity to make LA a role model for responding to homelessness. To be truly successful, however, Inside Safe needs to go beyond just relocating people to interim housing and double down on offering rehabilitation services to support people in their transition to permanent housing.

To fund Inside Safe, the city will need to spend a record-breaking amount of money. Bass’ proposed budget allocates $1.3 billion to combat homelessness, with $250 million going to Inside Safe and the rest toward funding initiatives such as building affordable housing and preserving existing housing. This follows the city spending $1.16 billion in 2022 and $801 million in 2021.

Although voters continue to label homelessness as one of the most important issues facing LA, their patience for ballooning budgets is not indefinite. Even Gov. Gavin Newsom, traditionally one of the biggest spenders on anti-homelessness programs, has changed his rhetoric recently, citing a need for tangible results instead of blindly spending money.

Bass’ plan uses a “housing-first” approach, a label used for homelessness policies that are chiefly focused on housing people as quickly as possible.

Kristen Aster, the director of public policy and advocacy for The People Concern – a community organization that works to move people experiencing homelessness to permanent housing – said it’s impractical to try to provide support for someone struggling with mental health challenges or drug addiction if they don’t first have housing.

“People can’t address the complex things that are going on in their lives if they don’t have a safe place to sleep at night,” Aster said.

However, Aster added, ultimately, only permanent housing and permanent supportive housing can solve homelessness.

Aster said The People Concern uses a trauma-informed approach to individually connect those in permanent supportive housing with medical resources, benefit programs and mental health care. According to Aster, roughly 92% of people who receive these services remain housed.

One of the biggest threats to Inside Safe is a lack of adequate social services, potentially leaving the most vulnerable with the least help. Without adequate counseling and support for transitioning to permanent housing, Bass runs the risk of spending millions on temporary housing just for people to wind up back on the street.

The goal of every homelessness policy should be getting people safely inside, but temporary housing is only half of the solution. Robust services offered in tandem with interim housing will ensure a lasting transition to permanent housing.

The new focus on homelessness will naturally make its way to Westwood.

Andrew Lewis, vice president and chair of the Homeless and Community Health Committee for the North Westwood Neighborhood Council, said addressing homelessness in Westwood is a top priority for the next term.

He added that the neighborhood council is supporting the city in trying to find a site for permanent supportive housing in Westwood, an example of Bass’ goals trickling down to neighborhood councils.

Third-year human biology and society student Emerald Wong is the media director for Bruin Shelter, an organization that assists community members experiencing housing insecurity. She said there is money to fund permanent supportive housing in Westwood, but the challenge for city officials has been identifying a site in a neighborhood that has nearly no vacancies.

While the city works on its response, programs like Bruin Shelter offer meaningful assistance to those struggling with housing insecurity.

Wong said the shelter provides dinner and breakfast along with a temporary safe place to stay for Bruins and the wider Westwood community. Graduate students act as case managers and individually connect people with programs to transition to more stable housing.

Inside Safe relies heavily on partnerships between LA and existing hotels and motels. If these businesses choose not to participate, the city’s money is useless. When Project Roomkey – the statewide program to convert motel rooms to temporary housing – launched during the peak of the pandemic, motels were vacant and looking for any source of income. Now with travel back to pre-pandemic numbers, that may no longer be the case.

As Bruin Shelter and The People Concern demonstrate, working on an individual level to understand everyone’s unique situation is the most effective way to connect people with the support they deserve. To offer these services to the over 69,000 unhoused people in LA will be a huge undertaking and requires even more money than Bass is currently proposing.

We are left at a crucial juncture. Our generation can either view homelessness as an unfortunate circumstance we look away from or accept that it’s our responsibility to find solutions that make safe shelter a basic necessity available to every American.

Bass is betting $1.3 billion on her plan. For it to work, counseling and individual support need to be mandatory in interim housing with the ultimate goal of dramatically expanding permanent housing.

Inside Safe is a chance for LA to become a leader in responding to homelessness. Let’s hope it works.

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