San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
L.A. settles suit, agrees to house more homeless
Los Angeles has agreed to build potentially thousands of new beds and housing units under the terms of a legal settlement, apparently bringing to an end a key portion of a contentious, long-running federal lawsuit over homeless housing and enforcement across the city.
The proposed agreement announced Friday between the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights and the city would require opening enough beds over the next five years to accommodate 60% of the city’s unsheltered population in each City Council district.
City officials say about 13,300 beds of various kinds are already being planned, including permanent supportive housing as well as beds that people can stay in temporarily.
As a result, it remains unclear how many new units not already in the pipeline and counted by the city will be required to reach the 60% goal. But city officials estimate that all of this building, including what is already planned, will cost between $2.4 billion and $3 billion over the next several years.
The exact number of beds required will depend on the results of January’s point-intime homeless count, which will be released later this spring. Based on the results of the last count in 2020, city officials estimate they would need to have at least 14,000 beds open.
By agreeing to build potentially thousands more beds for the homeless, city officials
Cyclists pass a homeless encampment in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles last year. A count in 2020 found about 41,000 homeless people in the city, with 70% of them unsheltered.
believe it will give them the ability to enforce anti-camping measures more broadly once offers of shelter have been made. The 2020 count found about 41,000 homeless people in the city. About 70% of those people were unsheltered, living outdoors or in cars.
Notably, Los Angeles County, which is also a defendant in the case, is not part of the settlement announced. City
officials said the county should be responsible for housing and providing services for thousands of the sickest and most vulnerable people living on the street.
By seeking to shift responsibility to the county for sheltering this population, as the settlement lays out, the city effectively reduced the number of homeless people it would be responsible for housing.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit — who are a group of mostly downtown residents, business groups and some formerly homeless people — alleged the city and county had failed in their duty to protect public health and safety and to provide shelter to people living on the streets.