Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is doubling down on advocating for the homeless, railing for over 30 minutes on her proposed record-breaking $1.3 billion budget that plans to buy and convert hotels and motels into housing for those on the street while also calling for more police officers.
(Video Credit: FOX 11 Los Angeles)
The radical leftist mayor was elected in November after vowing to handle the homeless crisis in the City of Angels. She said in her long-winded speech that the budget would also provide homeless people with treatment programs.
The speech given on Monday was the mayor’s annual address to the LA City Council on the state of the city. She has been in office for almost four months and is now making good on her promise concerning the homeless. A promise that does not handle the crisis in the least. It more or less hides it.
“There is a difference between spending and investing,” Bass said during a news conference. “This budget makes investments in bringing people inside and public safety, and other areas that will lead a return in terms of saving lives, in terms of quality of life and better neighborhoods.”
Bass’ administration is already sifting through its inventory of properties to identify what could be used for housing the homeless population which is still growing under her progressive leadership.
My first budget proposal to create a New Los Angeles that is stronger, healthier, happier and safer was released today.
It reflects Angelenos' most pressing needs by making unprecedented investments to dramatically reduce homelessness and improve public safety. pic.twitter.com/1J1cC0J2Wv
— Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) April 19, 2023
It’s all part and parcel of her Inside Safe homeless program which purportedly offers homeless people motel rooms and a path to permanent housing with services. The program has more than 1,000 enrollees so far according to the mayor.
Gov. Gavin Newsom provided so-called leadership by going down this flawed path, promising to deliver 500 units of temporary housing to the city. President Biden has also gifted Los Angeles and its county more than $200 million for homeless programs.
Bass contends that the budget proposal will solve the city’s homeless problem. What it is likely to do is increase the problem as the plan makes it easier for addicts, the mentally unstable, and those down on their luck to exist on the streets. It would be far more beneficial to find a way to put them to work and get them actively back into society or in a facility that can take care of them.
“After years of frustration… we can see a clearer path to a new Los Angeles,” she declared. “We have finally dispelled the myth that people do not want to come inside. They do.”
Bass’ efforts are a continuation of spending on homeless programs that have exploded over time. Former Mayor Eric Garcetti signed a budget in 2021 with almost $1 billion in homeless spending. The predictable result was that the homeless population continued to increase.
Karen Bass to Lord Newscum who purged a surplus budget at record speed, “Hold my Beer”
— Daniel Jenkins (@DanielJ52541) April 18, 2023
The mayor has already started to house homeless individuals in rooms at a number of hotels and motels across Los Angeles. Critics and the homeless themselves are not impressed at this point. Some complain that they have been moved so many times they feel more dispossessed than they did when they lived in sidewalk tents.
“It felt like I had a home,” Princeton Parker, who is a 38-year-old participant in Bass’ Inside Safe program, told the LA Times concerning the first hotel he was moved into.
That didn’t last long as Parker and other homeless people were then moved out of that hotel and shuffled between two more in a single week.
“I was extremely excited,” he claimed. “And they just took that from me.”
The homeless are now all over Los Angeles, even in wealthy neighborhoods. Their trash-strewn encampments or broken-down RVs are all along the city’s streets, sprawled beneath underpasses, and are marring freeway exits.
https://twitter.com/KellyLA_2028/status/1646880663432491009
There are over 40,000 homeless people across the city. About half of them are reportedly drug or alcohol addicts. A third of them are mentally ill. The average death rate for the homeless in LA is about five a day, according to the Daily Mail.
The economy is teetering on the brink of a collapse. Los Angeles already doesn’t have the kind of money Bass wants to spend and as things get worse economically, the homeless are not going to be a top priority probably.
City Controller Kenneth Mejia has a number of other concerns that take priority over the homeless debacle. They include repairing crumbling streets and sidewalks and higher pension costs for retirees that “already consume fully 15 percent of the city’s general fund budget,” according to the Daily Mail.
Crime has been spiraling out of control in leftist Los Angeles as well. Car thefts and shootings are up and the number of police is dropping. Bass warned that the number of officers could drop below 9,000, a number not seen since 2002.
They all endorsed
Karen Bass for Mayor – and crime has gotten worse since. https://t.co/A9RWw2JszV— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) April 16, 2023
The mayor’s budget calls for hiring about 400 police officers. Bass is looking to give newly hired police officers a $15,000 signing bonus, as well as other financial incentives to city employees who find recruits. Police Chief Michel Moore said the LAPD has been sending out inquiries to former officers and has received “some interest” from about 70 people so far, according to the LA Times.
The budget also earmarks money for a team of social workers and clinical psychologists who could respond to emergency calls when a police officer is not required. That’s another bad idea.
“We know safety goes far beyond lights and sirens,” she cluelessly proclaimed.
Bass is the first black woman to serve as mayor of LA. She was also on Biden’s short-list for vice president.
She ran her election campaign on a platform of getting homeless people off the streets and into shelters, reversing spiking crime rates, and developing housing that working-class families can afford. What Angelenos elected and what they will get are almost assuredly two radically different things.
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