Mayor Eric Garcetti, we implore you to stop promising to “end homelessness” for the third time since 2013 (see footnote 1 below) while you and city leaders are in a free-fall of failure driven by your own inaction and the rivers of red tape at the very top.
Sticky ads on the front page of the Los Angeles Times sent readers to their cell phones to call (213) 978-0600 to tell Mayor Garcetti to get with it. The stickies also send readers to LAScandal.org, where a growing list of City Hall failures and skyrocketing homeless numbers are explained.
The sticky ads by chance ran concurrent with an L.A. Times front pager that, outrageously, has the mayor claiming once again that he’s going to end homelessness in L.A. He vowed the same in 2013 and again in 2017. It’s soaring instead.
A clearly rattled Mayor Garcetti then went on KNX News Radio today to claim that use of a church parking-lot sleepover program, underused school district land, and city-owned properties will all be combined to dramatically reduce homelessness.
Everyone, we are sorry to be blunt, but these claims the mayor made on KNX are not real.
We at Coalition to Preserve LA have investigated the church program. The Safe Parking Program is a great idea — and it’s non-existent at Los Angeles churches. Of hundreds of possible temples, churches and mosques, only 1 church has been able to cut the official red tape to set up a parking lot sleepover program. And 1 temple has a pre-existing program that was not sponsored by the city.
One. One City Hall/church parking program exists, and by the way, it is creating FAR MORE HOUSING than the mayor has built in the 16 months since we voters approved Measure HHH. By letting people sleep in their own cars.
None. None is how many homeless units Mayor Garcetti, his chief advisor Rich Llewellyn and the non-innovative, slow-mo, red tape-bound city hierarchy has managed to build since Angelenosvoted to spend $1.2 billion in November of 2016.
Fifteen. That’s how many City Council members were given the power by mayoral advisor Rich Llewellyn to write “veto letters” that unilaterally halt really great homeless development plans in THEIR City Council districts.
Hundreds. That’s how many calls are being made to 213-978-0600 today, to tell the mayor to stop spinning and start building!
I called up this number at City Hall today and spoke to a nice woman who said they’d had a lot of calls. She could not explain why the city is spending $430,000 on each homeless unit. Or why the first homeless unit is finally erected in AUGUST OF 2019!!!
They could open homeless units for a little over $100,000 each, housing four times as many people, and they could do it now, this spring.
The mayoral aide told me she would get me somebody to talk to about the non-existent church sleepover program.
Instead I got a full voicemail at Garcetti’s office, that’s how many people are calling him. Please call and speak to live aides who are answering. At least you can tell someone that nothing is being achieved, at (213) 978-0600.
According to the L.A. Times story today, there seems to be little communicating by the mayor to the City Council about his far-off deadlines for building homeless housing. Maybe if the council members knew, they’d be outraged. The Times reported “Some city council members said Tuesday they were unaware of the [mayor’s] target dates.”
Footnote 1: In 2013, as a mayoral candidate, Eric Garcetti vowed to “end homelessness.” In an April 2017 speech, he vowed to “end homelessness.” Now Mayor Garcetti in 2018 said it again. The mayor is “O” for 3.