The Los Angeles City Council members, along with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, have declared a state of emergency regarding the city's high rate of homelessness during a news conference held on Tuesday. Prior to the announcement, the Garcetti administration issued a proposal last Monday to release $100 million by 2016 on housing and other services for the homeless - the council has yet to vote to approve.
"It's a humanitarian crisis and a moral shame. It has reached a critical breaking point that the sea of despair that we witness on the streets of Los Angeles each and every day must end, and it begins with all of us here today," said Councilman José Huizar, co-chair of the Los Angeles Homeless and Poverty Committee, according to NBC Los Angeles.
The number of street dwellers in Los Angeles, Calif. is mounting and officials have decided that they have had enough. As of Tuesday, there were 26,000 homeless individuals roaming around the city, a 12 percent increase since 2013, which created public nuisance and restlessness from the tax-paying residents.
"If you walk five blocks south and one block over, you'll enter the largest concentration of homeless in the country - about 4,000 homeless living in Skid Row. Unfortunately, that is just a small percentage of the city's homeless population. Yes, 85 percent of the city's homeless population lives outside of Skid Row, throughout the city," said Huizar, according to ABC News.
Last July, Garcetti declared that he is preparing for a battle plan which he dubbed as the "war on homelessness here in Los Angeles." He also said that the plan would be released in a month. Two months after his speech, the plan has still not been issued. Even so, Garcetti is still hopeful as he addressed the county officials to invest so that the proposal would push through. "This year we added $2.9 million from our city budget to CES (Coordinated Entry System), and I'm asking the county, my friends, to match that. I know they can do it, and they've been wonderful partners," said Garcetti, as reported on Los Angeles Times.
Allice Callaghan, a Skid Row advocate for the homeless, says that isn't enough. She can't help but compare New York City's $41 billion fund for housing subsidies to Los Angeles City's $100 million fund proposal. "A hundred million dollars won't even buy all the homeless pillows. A hundred million certainly won't build much housing - and what we really have here is a housing crisis," said Callaghan, according to MSN.
The City Council members say they hope to find a strategic plan before the year ends.
