Karen Bass Launches New Housing Program To Help Tackle Homelessness In Los Angeles

Homelessness is a big issue in Los Angeles

Solving the city’s homelessness crisis has been at the top of Bass’s priority list. On her first day as mayor, Bass promised to build more housing to help quell the issue, allocating nearly $1.2 billion of the city’s budget. Nearly 40,000 people experience homelessness in Los Angeles. The crisis disproportionately impacts Black, Latinos, and the formerly incarcerated.

Under the initiative, Karen Bass hopes to house over 17,000 homeless people in her first year. Upon taking office, the former House representative said that she would work closely with officials to train outreach workers to move homeless communities off the streets. The teams will include trained outreach workers, medical and mental health professionals, and social workers. The program will also create job opportunities for the formerly unhoused to work directly with street teams. “As individuals with lived experience, they play a vital role as trusted messengers in helping others find the same stability they did,” her website notes.

Karen Bass’s passion for homelessness advocacy extends back to her early days with the Community Coalition. The former social worker helped push for converting motels into housing for the homeless in the 1990s, decades before COVID-19 spawned the creation of Project Roomkey, a federally funded homeless relief initiative in the state of California.