LA Mayor Karen Bass on Solving Homelessness: Are We on the Right Track?

Jim Newton: We're here to talk about homelessness, which is what we'll spend the bulk of our time  talking about, but it does seem a little bit malpractice of me not to start by asking about the national elections. And so, I apologize. Well, we all know what happened. To localize it: any sense from you of what this means for Los Angeles, for you, and the work you're doing here?

Mayor Karen Bass: Yes. I mean, it was interesting because in a matter of, like, five days, we all went on this unbelievable emotional roller coaster. On Friday, we had 220,000 people out here celebrating the Dodgers, and we were as high as we could be, and by Tuesday the roller coaster went downhill and crashed. So, I think it remains to be seen.

First of all, I want you to know that I'm trying to do everything I can over these next two months to get every policy, every dime that is headed our way to be here. I worry about grants where the money is not here. I don't mean encumbered. I don't mean awarded. I mean, the check is in the bank, because pretty much anything can be stopped.

We're going to wait and see some of the appointments he made. I know these folks, I served with them, and these are like, bizarre appointments. I just recall the time I almost had to break up a fist fight on the Judiciary Committee between Matt Gaetz and somebody else, and fortunately, I was sitting in the middle and was able to hold them off each other.

But seriously, we don't know who he's going to appoint to HUD, for example.

What we do know, if you read Project 2025—and although he says he had nothing to do with that, you know the man that he appointed around immigration wrote the piece on family separation and immigration—they don't outright call for the dismantling agencies. What they do is they redistribute the work of the agencies.

So, I looked at the Department of Education and HUD, and they basically take the major programs and put them in other departments, which is a sure death, because the other departments have a ton to do. It's not their focus, and so I think that's the way they provide cover.

The deal, though, is that he can do what he wants with HUD, but the reality is, housing is a crisis nationally. It is not just our crisis. I did join the US Conference of Mayors right away. I chair the National Task Force on Homelessness, so I've gotten to know lots of other mayors. 

One of the things I've discovered on this journey I've been on for the last two years is that, yes, my focus has been getting people off the street, but my focus has also been trying to change some of the dysfunction in the system, and then along the way, I keep running into either laws, regulations, or policies that literally, either make people homeless or make it so difficult to get them off the street.

One thing that I've been working on that I'm excited we've had success with is veterans. Did you know that if you are a veteran and you receive veteran’s benefits, we count it as income? And then we say, ‘you make too much money, so I can't give you a voucher.’ We literally have 3,000 vouchers in the county, and we have beds that are vacant because they're only for a veteran with a particular type of voucher.

There's so much of the system that you have to unravel while you're trying to address the problem at the same time. And I don't think—those of you that have been involved far longer than me would know— I don't think there has been a lot of attention paid to the rules, the regulations, and the laws that are roadblocks in us being able to get people housed.

Jim Newton: Is there any prospect of those getting better?

Yes, I think so. First of all, I did spend 12 years there, and 4 out of those 12 years were under a Republican-controlled House, and I learned how to work on a bipartisan basis. And for whatever reason, even some of the most hardline MAGA folks I've worked with very well. I compartmentalize, and so I don't just assume that I can't get anything done. It's just that I'll have to get things done differently. So, sometimes deregulation can be a good thing.
…

Jim Newton: The election also brought the passage of Measure A. Talk about it a little. Estimates I've seen are a billion dollars a year commencing pretty much right away. How do you see that money furthering your efforts, and what can we expect or hope from that? 

Mayor Bass: In our conversations over the last two years, you know that one of my biggest concerns has been services.

I'm a little different in the sense that my background is in the medical field, so I look at things through that lens. And I think a real weakness in the system has been standards around services and accountability in terms of what's your outcome?  It's great to house 10 people, but what happened to them? How long did they stay housed? And if they fell out of housing, why did they fall out of the housing? And so, I believe that it has been a weak link.

By the way, the van outside, UCLA street medicine and the work that they do. I told them, I feel the medical community has not stepped up, that Housing First has meant, literally, Housing First. And to me, it should be Housing and Services first. It's part of critiquing the system as well.

The part that I participated in, in terms of writing Measure A, was the accountability measures, the outcome. Having things based on outcome, and also having services clearly defined.  I do not fault for one minute the community-based organizations. They are working way beyond what they have the resources for, but we have to do better.  

We'll see, the future will tell—but I believe that if services were much stronger, much more focused, and much more consistent that people would stay housed longer because we would address what their problems were.

Jim Newton: So how does Measure A help you with that?

Mayor Bass:  So, part of Measure A goes to building housing, okay? But part of Measure A goes to the services. 

When voters passed Measure H years ago, it provided services and was about to expire in 2027. Measure A basically cancels out Measure H early and replaces it. It is a sales tax and is permanent.  That was a criticism of it, by the way, especially from the business community, that leaving it as permanent. But I think that we were overly optimistic in H and HHH being 10 years.

I mean, I've been here two years now in this position, and this is going to take a while. I mean, it took us 30 years to get to where we are now. And I watched this. For the young people in the room, we have an entire generation that have grown up thinking that it's normal to have tents on the street, and I think we have to let go of that. This is not normal, and this was not always here. But on the other hand, it did take 30 years to get here. It's not going to take two years to magically change the whole system. 

Jim Newton: I've heard you say you didn't feel you needed more power, but you did feel you needed more money to address this problem. Does Measure A provide you enough money? 

Mayor Bass: No. No, it absolutely is not enough. It's what we could get.

Now, for example, in the City of LA, we know we get at least $60 million, but $60 million is not enough.  

I mean, we have to, as a society, at some point, decide if we want to solve this problem or not. And if we want to solve the problem, then we have to address it comprehensively, which means we have to prevent people from falling into homelessness to begin with.

And when Measure H and HHH were passed, people were not thinking about that. I understand it. I think the number at that time was 14,000, and HH was supposed to build 10,000 units. Well, nobody accounted for the fact that the population would triple. And so, it looks like, in some people's eyes, that measure H and HHH failed. They didn't, the problem just exploded.

So, we are going to need more money. But in my opinion, we need to demonstrate to voters that we are more accountable, we’re transparent, and we can say what the outcome measures are.

We're going through these audits and all now, and we know what the audits are going to show, but to me, it was very important to jump in and save people's lives, as opposed to spend the first six months diagnosing what was broken in the system and then spending the next six months on trying to fix it. 

I've been trying to do everything all at once. Conway Collis is here. He's the CEO of the mayor's fund. I inherited two nonprofits when I took over, and Eric used the mayor's fund for COVID relief, and we've changed it. And he's focusing on developing a model for prevention, because, by the way, we don't have anything to replicate. There are no models around preventing homelessness. We're having to create models, address homelessness, change laws, and redesign the entire system, all at the same time. 

Jim Newton: There's an interesting contrast between your approach and Mayor Breed in San Francisco, who's talked about citing homeless, breaking up encampments, a more forceful approach, at least tonally, if not in substance[…] But I wonder what explains, from your perspective, the difference in those two approaches in these two prominent cities on the West Coast, and why you have opted for a gentler approach of trying to lure people out of homelessness, where she seemed to have opted for a more forceful approach? 

Mayor Bass: Well, not talking about her or her approach, I want to solve this. I want to end homelessness. The system was not designed to end homelessness. It was designed to manage homelessness. So, if we want to end homelessness, you get people housed, and you take care of what ever it is. So to me, it's not a solve versus hard. It's one that is going to work versus isn't going to work. 

And the thing is, is that, and you know, that was my concern around Grant's Pass. So, the Supreme Court basically has said you can arrest people. I think maybe one of the differences is that I'm older. I mean, you and I have known each other for a long time. We've seen this; we know this playbook.

That's why I ran, because I was afraid that we were getting ready to repeat history. And in the 90s, which is, I think, when we first met, that was when mass incarceration was just beginning. At that point, I was on the faculty at USC Medical School and with students, and I'm watching all these laws pass because of crack. And to me, crack was a health issue.

What happens when voters get angry is that then they passed terrible policies, and I frankly think that the reason we are in the situation now is because of bad policies that started, really, in the ‘80s, but because we had a fall out of our social safety net in the ‘80s, by the time the ‘90s hit, we just wanted to punish everybody because we were mad.

Voters were saying, ‘we've raised our taxes three times, and the problem just gets worse. They're all drug addicts, they're all mentally ill. Just get them away from me, and if they wind up being jailed, fine.’

Well, you and I know that doesn't work. It doesn't solve the problem. You can push homeless people down the street, [but] do you want to end it or not?

I'll tell you what I'm obsessed with is the fact that the world is coming. Where are we going to push 70,000 people? We have a choice here: solve your problems and invite the world, or have the world come and see that you didn't even know how to clean your house. If you invite guests, you clean your house, right? You even clean your house before the housekeeper gets there because you don’t want your housekeeper to see how dirty it is.

So, why on earth would we want to invite the world here? Everybody's talking about 2028—I'm talking about 2026: All Star Basketball Game, golf, and the World Cup--it lasts 40 days, eight games here. In 2027, the Super Bowl. Then we get around to the Olympics. 

Jim Newton: Are there cities in the United States that are doing an especially good job of this that we could just copy. I mean, are there other models out there that are more effective than what we've got? 

Mayor Bass: Well, I think a couple of things, New York. I think New York was effective because they designed a system of long term, interim housing. I remember going and visiting New York when I was in the state legislature, and they were beginning this then, and they bought a lot of hotels and stuff.  So they have more homeless people than we do, but they're not as many on the street. And it's not just because of the weather. It's because of this system. Now they also have a policy of a right to shelter. So New York in terms of building interim the way they did, or rather, buying interim .

Houston is a model everybody looks at. Houston is different in the sense that they've taken their structure that we have inside of government, placed it outside of government in an independent nonprofit. So now we have several different governance models that we're looking at. But I’m going to tell you again, what I find everywhere is the absence of health, and I'm not going to let that go.

There's a lot of people who wind up being homeless because of medical conditions. I met a woman who eventually got fired from her job. She kept missing work, she wasn't feeling well, didn't really have adequate health care—she was in Texas, so…then was diagnosed with cancer. By then, she was living out of her car and had to go through chemotherapy while living in her car. Today, she is living at Hilda Solis Village, which is made up of shipping containers.

Jim Newton: On the housing piece of it, the city doesn't really build housing, right? So, your job, as I would understand it, is really more to clear obstacles to construction—to expedite it, streamline, etc.  I wonder whether that places too much faith, ultimately, in the market? If you streamlined everything and eliminated every obstacle to affordable housing, wouldn't developers still want to develop higher-end housing anyway, without the obstacles? So, how do you create, not just more housing, but specifically housing that will help these people? 

Mayor Bass: Well, I think that developers are willing to build affordable housing and lower income housing. I mean, developers are expecting a profit, and there are some developers that are willing to accept a lower profit.

We found that when we did executive directives at expedited, they were very willing to do that. But you know, one thing about policy is, to me, when you pass a policy you should evaluate it to see whether it’s working or not.

We did the Executive Directive 1, and then it turns out we had some problems with it, and so we revised it, and are continuing to revise it. One of the problems that we found was that it was going to essentially unleash a lot of building in single family neighborhoods that apartments would be.

I know some people think that my concern was the higher income neighborhoods, but actually it was both, but it was the lower income neighborhoods too. Because what I found was for-profit developers were chomping at the bit to go to South  LA and East LA, and I did not want to be responsible for the total transformation—which I believe ultimately would lead to gentrification.

Because you can start off as a lower income, but nobody says you have to do that for life.  I was worried that they were going to completely change the character. They were also going to displace people. Like, ‘I'm just going to displace these 12 families, but I'm actually going to build 40 units.’ Okay, that's good, but what happens to those 12 families?

Jim Newton: How are you measuring success in all this? … How will you know a year from now, two years from now, whether this is working? How are you measuring your own success?

Karen Bass Well, one, you really do measure it. Meaning that, if you're bringing people into housing, who are they? What happens to them? How long do they stay there? If they fall out, why did they fall out?

So how I would measure myself, first and foremost, is with a significant reduction in street homelessness, which I we have seen. A lot more to go. Success also will be when Conway figures out the silver bullet to prevention, when we've actually created a model. And the other measure of success, to me, will be the comprehensive services. Services that are tested.

I have this dream of creating a headquarters—a healing center—maybe in one of the big hotels that we could buy, where we co-locate county services, we have health clinics, we have education— LAUSD, community colleges—we have programming.

Because I'll tell you, one of the things that scares me to death is that we put these people in these motels, and they have some services, but what do they do all day and all night? Programming! There needs to be programming. And I frankly think there needs to be 24-hour programming. There needs to be 12 Steps. There needs to be a lot of things that are not there.

Again, I'm not faulting the service providers. They don't have the resources. I came in and—I didn't mean to--but really, I kind of exploded their workload.

Now, one could ask me, where are you going to get the workforce? As a past working faculty member, there are thousands of students who have to do clinical hours to get their licenses. They have to, It’s a part of their education. It’s very structured, very documented, and this is a hot topic. So, social work, psychologists, physical therapists—you name it! Anything in the health field, anything in the social sciences, right? You’ve got to do your hours. When I did my masters, I had to do a 1,000 hours.

Jim Newton: Some percentage, obviously, of people who are unhoused are either profoundly ill because they are unhoused or unhoused because they are profoundly ill or seriously, probably unable to even discern the degree of their own incapacity… What's happens to them?

Mayor Bass: You keep pushing my button, because it's the services. You have to have mental health services, but I appreciate the way you framed it, because it really is a chicken and egg situation. 

The general perception is that people use drugs, and they lose their house, but people don't think about the fact that when you're on the street, there's people that use meth to stay awake all night, so that they can survive the night. I challenge anybody here to go sleep on the streets for five days and tell me your mental health is what it was before.

Do you know that the fastest growing sector of the unhoused are seniors in their late 60s and 70s, predominantly women, predominantly women of color? You don't necessarily see them. The people that you see who are unhoused are the people, in some instances, who are the most seriously ill. And there's some people who are so profoundly ill they might not even know they’re on the street.

And I happen to believe, controversial as it might be, but I happen to believe that some people should be hospitalized involuntarily. We've taken a step in that direction with the Care Court, but the Care Court is voluntary. 

And the fascinating thing to me is that people who are so offended by me saying that don't seem to be offended by the by the fact that in our city, we run the most expensive mental health institution down the street, it's called Twin Towers. Nobody's whooping and hollering out of what we do, which is we incarcerated people, but somehow I'm taking away their freedom if I hospitalized them to help them. I asked the president of the State Senate if there was an appetite in Sacramento. And you know, change, profound change, like that usually does happen bit by bit. So, Care Court for me, is a step in the right direction.