Los Angeles Passes Sweeping Homeless Plans—Funding Still Needed

"Los Angeles city and county officials approved sweeping plans Tuesday aimed at getting thousands of homeless people off the streets," report Abby Sewell and Emily Alpert Reyes. "But one crucial question remains unanswered: Where will most of the money come from?"

The city of Los Angeles is faced with a growing number of homeless people living on streets, in parks, and under freeway passes around the city. An estimated 44,000 people are homeless countywide. The article offers the details, so far, of both of the policies enacted earlier this week:

The county plan approved Tuesday lays out a blueprint for spending the $150 million over the next two years on a variety of programs to reduce homelessness, on top of the nearly $1 billion a year county officials estimated they spend now on health and welfare services and law enforcement involving the homeless.

The city, in turn, approved a plan that would develop a host of housing programs, create a citywide system of mobile showers and public restrooms and allow overnight parking at designated sites for people who live in their vehicles, among other efforts.

The caution expressed by politicians about the big challenges ahead in funding those plans is buoyed by the words of Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, who was among a number of advocates quoted in the article: "We’ve been in this place a number of times….And usually that’s the bottleneck.... We get another report that says, 'We don’t have the money.'"