Raman's plan to cut street homelessness 50% by the Olympics

Nithya Raman will take office as Los Angeles mayor next month with a promise tied to a deadline. LAist reported that her plan would cut street homelessness by 50% in time for the 2028 Olympics and eliminate long-term encampments by the end of her first term. Raman won the Nov. 3 election over Mayor Karen Bass, and the Olympic deadline gives the promise a summer 2028 date.

The plan is a direct break from the approach Bass built her first term around. Raman says she will move away from the Inside Safe model, which focuses on getting people out of encampments and into motel rooms. Instead, she says she will prioritize getting people quickly onto rental subsidies and into longer-term housing. In a document released during her campaign, Raman wrote: "Motel rooms are our most expensive intervention — they should be used like emergency rooms to help people stabilize quickly and then move onto their next step."

Raman campaigned criticizing Inside Safe as too slow and too costly, saying the city needed to invest in other solutions. LAist reported that since late 2022, the city has placed 5,800 people into interim housing through Inside Safe. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority says 40% of them have returned to homelessness.

The starting point is a large one. The latest point-in-time count found more than 29,000 unsheltered people in Los Angeles. LAist reported that under Bass, unsheltered homelessness dropped by around 11% overall since its 2023 peak, but rose this year, according to the count. Bass made her own remarks on the election Thursday at the opening of a 140-bed interim housing facility in North Hills. The Los Angeles Times reported that she called her defeat part of "a wave that took place around the country."

What the plan would do

Raman's plan for encampments is to move people out of motel rooms within four months. It would also expand a program that provides unhoused people with rental subsidies and case management for up to two years, so they can move into housing more quickly. LAist reported that Bass's team criticized the strategy as "unrealistic," saying it relied on private landlords renting to people who had been living on the street.

The plan has supporters and skeptics among the people who study the issue. Gary Blasi, a UCLA law professor emeritus who has followed homelessness policy in Los Angeles for 40 years, said he has heard promises like this "for a very long time, but they were always dramatically over-promised." Alex Visotzky, a senior California policy fellow at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said, "The plan is ambitious, it's bold, and I think that's a good thing." LAist reported that experts it spoke to called a halving of street homelessness in a year and a half a stretch, but said a significant reduction by 2028 would be a victory.

Longtime Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez took a harsher view. LAist quoted him writing that he "cringe[s] when I hear such grandiose proclamations," and pointing to problems outside mayoral control, including income inequality, mental health problems and the high cost of building new housing.

The Olympics problem

The 2028 deadline comes with its own pressure. The Olympics and Paralympics are expected to displace potentially thousands of unhoused people living near venues, if those places fall within security perimeters set by the U.S. Secret Service. LAist reported that there is still no plan from local officials on how they will address encampments ahead of the Games, or where people will go. There is also no additional funding.

The City Council passed a motion last week asking staff to report back on how the city will respond to homeless encampments near venues during the Games. Advocates have raised concerns that without advance planning, unhoused people could be swept with nowhere to go, or that the federal government could intervene.

Blasi said the urgency of 2028 could be an opportunity for the Raman administration to lay groundwork for longer-term solutions that keep people from returning to homelessness, such as more permanent housing options. "It's not impossible to come up with a plan that's motivated in part and at least time limited by the Olympics," he said. Visotzky said the goal can push a city to move faster: "When you set an ambitious and bold goal, you tend to get farther than you might have without the goal."

What to know

Raman says she will cut street homelessness 50% by summer 2028 and end long-term encampments by the end of her first term.
The latest count found more than 29,000 unsheltered people in Los Angeles.
Inside Safe placed 5,800 people in interim housing since late 2022, and 40% returned to homelessness, LAHSA says.
Her plan moves people out of motel rooms within four months and expands rental subsidies with case management for up to two years.
The city has no plan yet for where people will go before the Games, and no added funding, LAist reported.

Our take

The number is big and the deadline is close. Whether this plan works will show up first in the tents and motel rooms of people who are living on the streets now, not in a press release. Those who live near the venues and the people who will be moved should hear the details before the first encampment is cleared. Do you think 2028 is a realistic deadline for street homelessness, and what should the city do first? Tell us in the comments below, or post about it on the community board.

Sources

File photo: Los Angeles City Hall, 2022, by Another Believer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

What do you think? Tell us in the comments below, or post about it on the community board.

LA This Weekend Team