LOS ANGELES – The City of Los Angeles has agreed to spend up to $3 billion over the next five years to homeless some of its 41,000 residents, according to a proposed settlement announced Friday.
The city has also agreed to build enough shelters to accommodate 60 percent of the homeless in each of the 15 council districts. People who are considered chronically homeless or have a chronic illness will continue to be a county responsibility.
The settlement stems from a complaint filed in 2020 by a group of business owners, residents and community leaders, calling on city and county officials to address the desperate conditions facing homeless people, including hunger, crime, filth and the coronavirus pandemic. was accused of failing to do so.
There are ongoing lawsuits involving the county and the group, the LA Alliance for Human Rights.
Under the agreement, which must be approved by the council, the city will spend $2.4 billion to $3 billion to provide 14,000 to 16,000 beds over the next five years.
City Council President Nuri Martínez said in a statement: “We have families living in tents, women fleeing domestic violence sleeping in parks, people clearly struggling with mental illness who are alone on our streets at night.” Let’s go.”
He said the county must do its part by providing mental health care, substance abuse treatment and outpatient rehab beds.
Last year, US District Judge David Carter ordered The City and County of Los Angeles to find shelter for all nonresidential residents on Skid Row within 180 days and audit their spending on homeless services.
In a fiery 110-page order, Carter criticized the authorities’ inability to stop the unprecedented increase in homelessness, which has led to the spread of cantonments to nearly every neighborhood in the region.
“All the rhetoric, promises, plans, and budgets cannot obscure the shameful reality of this crisis – year after year, there are more homeless Angelenos, and year after year, more homeless Angelenos die on the streets,” he said. Preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiff as written in.
City leaders have said that the motivation to solve the region’s homelessness crisis comes from the county, while lawyers representing the county have repeatedly said The lawsuit has “no merit.”
“The county is doing its job and doing everything possible without stigmatizing homelessness as a crime,” Skip Miller, a lawyer based out of Los Angeles County, said in an emailed statement. “Any claim that the county has failed on this obligation is completely baseless.”
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors struck a softer tone following Friday’s announcement, saying in a statement that “the county will continue to use its resources to support people experiencing homelessness in the Los Angeles area that is affected by this.” subject of trial.”
The back-and-forth between county and city officials has become a symbol of a crisis plaguing California’s biggest cities. the state rains billions of dollars in reducing homelessness, while experts warn that thousands of people living on the streets could die before adequate housing is found.
In response to the proposed settlement, Los Angeles City Council member Kevin De Leon said the city was left with “two options” as the county continued to fight the lawsuit.
“When it became clear that our colleagues in the county were not interested in cooperating, we were left with two options: We could ride out the litigation while people lived and die on our streets or volunteered to help. used to cut his own path. More and more people,” he said.
“We decided to take the lead because it’s not our job as city leaders to do good, country club politics with anyone,” he said.