LOS ANGELES — To help guide neighborhood-based efforts to end homelessness and build on his Days of Compassion movement, Mayor Eric Garcetti today convened more than 300 neighborhood council members, homelessness liaisons, business leaders, and City commissioners to connect them with service providers on the frontlines of the crisis.
As part of the Engage L.A. event hosted at Getty House, representatives of organizations including Lava Mae, Chrysalis, Downtown Women’s Center, and Wesley Health Center answered questions on how to support local efforts to guide homeless Angelenos to services and housing, transform empty lots into safe parking sites, and build temporary, modular shelters.
“The fight to end homelessness is everyone’s fight,” said Mayor Garcetti. “No single entity — government, philanthropy, or the private sector — can solve the crisis alone, but together we can empower communities to make meaningful, lasting change. We need to keep creating new ways to pull Angelenos together around the idea that everyone deserves to live in safety and with dignity.”
To support this work, the Mayor’s office has launched a Days of Compassion website to help Angelenos organize, donate, and explore the possibility of using underutilized properties as future sites for permanent supportive housing and access points for services.
The Mayor also encouraged attendees to utilize his Housing Resource Matchmaker, a system to link the skills and resources of Angelenos with high-capacity, mission-driven builders and service providers. For example, a landlord interested in renting to homeless veterans might be paired with the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), which provides veterans with rental assistance in the private market. A church with a parking lot could be partnered with permanent supportive housing developers who have the expertise and experience to help convert the lot into permanent housing for the homeless.
According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority annual Point-in-Time Count, overall homelessness in the City of Los Angeles increased by 20% from 2016 to 34,189 people.
Voters overwhelmingly passed two homelessness initiatives to help combat the crisis: Measure H will pay for services that are expected to help lift 45,000 people out of homelessness; Proposition HHH is estimated to build up to 10,000 units of permanent supportive housing over the next decade.
Mayor Garcetti has made unprecedented investments in housing and services to assist homeless Angelenos. He has also proposed an affordable housing linkage fee, which would require the developers of certain market-rate projects to include affordable housing on-site or contribute to a fund that supports new affordable housing production.
