With the Biden admin offering 100% reimbursement for local efforts to use hotels/motels to house our unhoused neighbors during the pandemic, LA needs to move aggressively to expand Project Roomkey to bring thousands of people indoors to safety.
Today, the Homelessness & Poverty Committee, chaired by @MRTempower, unanimously approved a motion from me and @nithyavraman calling for the city to use the promise of federal reimbursement to quickly and dramatically ramp up the use of hotels and motels for emergency housing.
The motion also directed the City Atty to report on whether the city can, if needed, commandeer and compensate motels/motels to get them to participate. (And City Atty issued a memo indicating the city can do so, echoing similar opinions from @mungertolles and @SFCityAttorney.)
The motion further called for officials to consult with unhoused residents, service agencies, and motel/hotel operators on how to expand and improve the program, finding ways to make it more attractive for residents, operators, and owners.
In 2020, four unhoused people died in LA every day, In January, the number rose to five. We MUST seize this opportunity to use every possible hotel and motel room for emergency housing -- and make sure it is a first and irreversible step to long-term housing.
With the city in a fiscal crisis, the pace of FEMA reimbursements is surely an issue, but it cannot be a roadblock. As @nithyavraman noted, we must prevail on the state of CA to help with the cash flow. Where there is a will (and a guaranteed reimbursement), there must be a way.

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More from @mikebonin

10 Dec 20
The City Council unanimously approved more than 700 new units of housing to help get people off the street today, including 77 rooms on the Westside, though Project Homekey: bit.ly/37OGT4V
This program is a smart and fast way to help unhoused neighbors move indoors. The 44-room Super 8 on Airport Blvd in Westchester and the 33-room Ramada Inn on Washington Blvd in Marina del Rey to help rapidly move people off nearby streets.
We can’t wait years for the construction of new units. We need to get people off the streets immediately -- and purchasing motels and hotels is one of the fastest and most efficient ways we can do that.
Read 4 tweets
4 Dec 20
With crime on the rise, let’s remember who is responsible for cuts in neighborhood patrols -- our police union. They lobbied hard for a budget that cut patrols in order to pay for their raises. And now they are gaslighting us about it. Image
In the middle of a severe budget crisis, the police union (LAPPL) aggressively lobbied for a budget proposal that would have sizably increased the LAPD budget while CUTTING neighborhood patrols by 220,000 hours a year.
To pay for their raises, LAPPL was willing to throw everyone under the bus - including their civilian coworkers. They were ok with moving sworn officers off patrol and onto desk duty. They were OK with cutting gang intervention programs.
Read 13 tweets
26 Aug 20
Los Angeles needs social housing to address our worsening affordable housing and homelessness crises.
Through public ownership or community land trusts, social housing can create communities that are affordable to teachers and nurses, grocery workers and restaurant employees, seniors and students.
Social housing can be part of multi-faceted strategy that creates affordable housing, addresses homelessness, and prevents predatory speculation that fuels gentrification and destroys and displaced neighborhoods.
Read 8 tweets
29 Jun 20
What is the best way to keep our neighborhoods safe? For decades, conventional wisdom said to hire more police officers. That’s what LA did, even if it meant cutting everything else in the budget, and even if it meant lots of people — particularly African Americans — felt unsafe.
LA is waking up to a better, smarter approach, one that asks not “how many more cops do we need?” but “what is the best way to provide public safety, public health and emergency response?”
If we were going to design a public safety system from scratch, no one would say that the appropriate and necessary response to mental health crises, traffic collisions, or reports of loud parties should be armed agents with the authority to use deadly force.
Read 24 tweets
10 Sep 19
This is chilling. @realDonaldTrump wants to "crackdown" on homelessness and put people into "government facilities." We've buried refugee children held hostage in his damn facilities. What inhumane treatment will he sanction for the unhoused? wapo.st/2m7Y7pH
And @realDonaldTrump 's freaking administration is actually CAUSING homelessness, throwing immigrant families out of housing, cutting health care, contributing to worsening income inequality.
Over the weekend, an angry woman actually asked me why we weren't putting unhoused people into internment camps. "We did it for 120,000 Japanese. Why can't we do it now?" Sounds like @realDonaldTrump wants to grant her disgusting wish.
Read 6 tweets

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