GARCETTI BUDGET TARGETS POVERTY

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti offered his vision Monday for helping the city emerge from the financial devastation of COVID-19, saying city leaders should commit to economic justice by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into relief programs and ramping up initiatives that keep residents safe, employed and out of poverty.

In his State of the City address, Garcetti promised to spend nearly $1 billion on initiatives for addressing homelessness, as well as increased funding for gang intervention workers, sidewalk vending programs, arts activities and relief for businesses.

The mayor, appearing in front of a tiny audience next to commanding views outside the Griffith Observatory, laid out plans for delivering $1,000 per month to 2,000 of the city’s neediest households over the next year, as part of a “basic guaranteed income” pilot program that he described as the biggest of any city in America.

The proposals reflect the political shift that has taken place at City Hall since last spring and summer, when Los Angeles residents filled the streets to protest police brutality and racial inequality that traces back to the city’s origins. They also serve as the mayor’s acknowledgment that COVID-19, which has left nearly 24,000 dead across Los Angeles County, had a devastating and disproportionate impact on the region’s Black and Latino families, especially those who are working class.

“We saw how unfair the world still was,” Garcetti said. “The pandemic hit us all, but it hit some of us worse, taking too many of our seniors and too many of our sick, too many of our poor in too many communities of color. And it reminded us how much work we still have left to do.”

Garcetti described his upcoming spending plan, which will cover the year that starts July 1, as a “justice budget” that would be the most progressive of any municipal spending plan in the U.S.