as an emergency<\/a>, pledging to bring tens of thousands indoors, cut red tape and build housing faster. But, despite the $1.3 billion allocated toward the issue, the results fall far short of her promises. Even the Rand study cited in the article shows the annual homeless count misses many \u201crough sleepers\u201d \u2014 people without tents or cars who live entirely exposed. If the count underreports, we\u2019re congratulating ourselves on paper while the crisis deepens in real life.<\/p>\nAcross Los Angeles, residents see little visible change. I work in an area where this disconnect is painfully clear. The building next door to my office, once a small motel and restaurant, was recently converted into a homeless shelter, directly across the street from a high school. It was done without the input of parents and business owners. Now, the surrounding sidewalks are lined with people sleeping outdoors \u2014 exactly what these programs were meant to prevent.<\/p>\n
The Inside Safe approach, while well-intentioned, has largely relied on short-term motel stays instead of creating lasting housing. Many individuals cycle back to the streets after a few weeks because there\u2019s no follow-up support or permanent placement.<\/p>\n
Mayor Bass deserves credit for focusing attention and funding on homelessness, but the results show a system that spends massively while managing, not solving, the crisis. If we truly want to reduce homelessness \u2014 not just relocate it \u2014 the city must enforce its own zoning laws, track spending rigorously and prioritize real housing solutions over temporary fixes.<\/p>\n
Hua Gu, Calabasas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oct. 21, 2025 7 AM PT To the editor: Doug Smith\u2019s article exposes a hard truth: Despite record…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[847,283,13827,2072,1493,1011,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,13825,13826,592,13828,13823,13824,1291,8219],"class_list":["post-15922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-article","tag-car","tag-crisis","tag-editor","tag-homelessness","tag-housing","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-mayor-karen-bass","tag-new-rand-study","tag-people","tag-permanent-placement","tag-promise","tag-result","tag-street","tag-tent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}