Mayor Bass lifts state of emergency on homelessness. But ‘the crisis remains’

On her first day in office, Mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency on homelessness.

The announcement allowed the city to cut through red tape, including no-bid contracts, and to launch Inside Safe, Bass’s signature program focused on moving the homeless off the streets and into temporary housing.

On Tuesday, nearly three years after she took the helm, and with two years of homelessness in a row for the first time in recent years, the mayor announced she would lift the state of emergency on Nov. 18.

“We are beginning to see a real reversal in our city’s decades-long upward trend in homelessness,” Bass said in a memo to the City Council.

Still, the mayor said, more work is needed.

“The crisis remains, and so does our urgency,” she said.

The mayor’s announcement follows months of City Council efforts to extend the state of emergency, which the council initially approved.

Some council members argued that the state of emergency allowed the mayor’s office to operate from a public perspective and that contracts and leases should once again be submitted to a public hearing and vote.

Councilman Tim McAuker has been arguing for months that now is the time to return to business as usual.

“Emergency powers are designed to allow the government to suspend regulations and respond quickly when the situation demands, but at some point those powers must end,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

McCosker said the move would allow the council to “formalize” some programs launched during the state of emergency, while adding more transparency.

Councilors were concerned that the state of emergency would end without the codification of the first executive directive 1, which speeds up approval for homeless shelters as well as for developments that are 100% affordable and was issued by the boss shortly after she took office.

On October 28, the council voted to allow the city attorney to draft a bill that would incorporate the executive directive into law.

The mayor’s announcement follows positive reports about the city’s homelessness situation.

As of September, the safe-in-the-city program has moved more than 5,000 people into temporary housing since it began at the end of 2022. Of these people, more than 1,243 have moved into permanent housing, while another 1,636 remain in temporary housing.

This year, the number of homeless people living in shelters or on the city’s streets decreased by 3.4%, according to an annual count conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Agency. The number of unsheltered homeless people in the city even fell by a wide margin of 7.9%.

However, the number has its detractors. A study by Rand found that the annual survey missed nearly a third of the homeless in Hollywood, Venice and Skid Row — mainly those sleeping without tents or cars.

In June, a federal judge decided not to take over Los Angeles’ homeless programs, saying the city failed to meet certain terms of a settlement agreement with the nonprofit LA Alliance for Human Rights.

Councilman Nitya Raman, who chairs the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, said the end of the state of emergency does not mean the crisis is over.

“It just means we have to build financially sustainable systems that respond effectively,” she said. “By moving from emergency measures to long-term, institutional frameworks, we ensure consistent, accountable support for people experiencing homelessness.”

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.