SHAFAQNA-With the 2022 primary elections less than six months away, candidates are diving head-first into one of California’s most visible and persistent problems: homelessness.
The phenomenon is particularly evident in Los Angeles County, where about half of the state’s at least 49,000 chronically homeless people live. On Friday, Democratic Rep. Karen Bass, who’s running for Los Angeles mayor, pledged to house 15,000 people by the end of her first year in office and “end street encampments.” Meanwhile, tensions are escalating between Democratic City Councilman Kevin De León — who’s also running for mayor — and homeless advocates, who have accused De León’s office of “coercing people against their will into temporary shelters that are not always a good fit for them.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t mincing words, either: “We’ve got to clean up those encampments,” he said last week while unveiling a $2 billion plan to build tiny homes and other temporary shelters, which would act as a “bridge” to permanent supportive housing with services such as medical and mental health care and substance abuse treatment.
Another challenge: California doesn’t know how many people are currently unhoused. That’s because, as CalMatters housing reporter Manuela Tobias notes, the pandemic prompted the state to cancel last January’s point-in-time count, when service providers and volunteers fan out across cities and counties to count the number of people sleeping on the streets and in shelters. And as omicron rages, many counties — including Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area — have postponed this year’s count, scheduled for Jan. 26-27, until Feb. 23-24.
Meanwhile, the state’s rent relief program is running short on money — something the Legislature’s new housing leader, Democratic Assembly member Buffy Wicks of Oakland, identified as a top priority while talking with Manuela and the Los Angeles Times’ Liam Dillon on the “Gimme Shelter” podcast,Calmatters.org reported.
But advocates worry more aid won’t come before March, when most cities are set to allow landlords to resume evictions for nonpayment of rent. Jonathan Russell of Bay Area Community Services: “We will very likely … see the impact on homelessness … slowly grow and accrue in coming months and years.”