Episode 61 - Mayor of Los Angeles - Karen Bass

Mayor Karen Bass returns to Curiosity Invited for a third time a little more than 1 and 1/2 years since assuming the position. In this conversation Karen takes a deeper dive into the challenges of moving unhoused citizens from the streets to appropriate housing within their communities. The mayor explains that evaluating the scope of the problem and the cost of solutions requires looking more carefully at the true cost of the homeless crisis, which includes the costs of all of the ancillary services that must be marshalled when large groups of people are forced to live on the streets. These include - but aere not limited to -support from the fire department, the police, sanitation, in addition to the loss of business income merchants incur when customers are frightened off by homeless encampments.

And despite the many challenges of addressing this problem - cost, public opinion, providing infrastructure and social support, etc. etc. - Bass and her team are making enormous progress. significantly reducing the numbers of unhoused living on the streets of LA.

In addition, Mayor Bass tells us that the problem is widespread throughout the United States, and that housing the unhoused does nothing to prevent people from falling into homelessness. It is estimated that in Los Angeles, for every 200 people who come off the streets, another 215 fall into homelessness. Bass and her team are actively working of implementing strategies to address this little talked about but enormously important fact of our social reality. (Currently there are no models anywhere in the US addressing this challenge.)