Last year, Los Angeles officials spent $619 million to fight the homeless crisis in Southern California. Now, they're patiently waiting for May 31 when a report will be released showing their progress, or lack there of...
Peter Lynn, executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, told supervisors that L.A. is unlikely to see improvement until residents can find affordable housing and stability.
“If we as a region — as a state — cannot make affordable housing available, we are going to be very hard-pressed to get ahead of this,“ Lynn said.
L.A. county recently reported that 27,000 homeless people had found permanent housing. However, the city also spent $442 million (from Proposition HHH,) to develop apartments for the homeless, and none of them have opened yet. Advocates, as well as residents, are now wondering how long it will take for the homeless to return to the streets and the crisis to continue.
“Fighting homelessness is not for the faint of heart,” Mayor Yoga Pants Garcetti said. “We’re housing our homeless neighbors at an unprecedented rate — tens of thousands every year — and we need help from our state and federal partners to step up this progress.”
On May 31, we'll have the official 2019 report and plenty of thoughts on it. Until then, read the full story on the Los Angeles Times.