Los Angeles leaders on Wednesday allocated $12.4 million for emergency relief to get homeless people off the streets before the anticipated El Niño winter storms bear down on the city.
The vote to commit the funds, which include $10 million in short-term rent subsidies for veterans and other homeless people, and $1.7 million for emergency shelter beds, marks the first time in city history that elected leaders have dipped into the general fund for homeless aid, Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a news conference.
The funding also serves as a down payment on the $100 million that leaders have pledged to address the upsurge in homeless street encampments, Garcetti added.
“We have a model that works and we’re finally scaling it up,” Garcetti told a group of homeless outreach workers, service providers and media representatives.
About 26,000 men, women and children are homeless in Los Angeles, 18,000 of them without shelter of any kind. Garcetti and the City Council had been criticized for dawdling as the potentially deadly storms loomed, and for dropping a pledge to declare a formal state of emergency. This was viewed as a novel strategy for seeking federal and state disaster funds and for gaining flexibility in attacking the burgeoning homelessness.
Garcetti, speaking at LAMP Community, a skid row homeless agency, said he is in “ongoing discussions” with the governor’s office and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about sending emergency funds before the predicted rains turn into a disaster. The mayor also said he’s considering steps that include distributing pallets to get people off the wet pavement and opening aircraft hangars to storm refugees.