Mayor Eric Garcetti State of the City 2021 Housing & Homelessness Priorities

If we want a strong economy, we have to help small business owners thrive. I know that in my blood.

My grandfather Salvador was a barber … my other grandfather Harry was a tailor.

My first jobs, both unpaid and paid, were sweeping up the barbershop and hawking ties on the sales floor.

My family worked hard every day, but they were supported by on-ramps of opportunity, from the GI Bill to a city that invested in new housing.

Today, too many of our residents don’t have that access to capital or to stable housing.

We have to help build a better future for our most vulnerable residents so that on-ramps don’t turn into dead ends when workers can’t afford housing in the city where they work.

A year ago we saw an eviction tsunami bearing down on us.

While others debated, we took swift action, keeping people housed, passing one of the first eviction moratoriums in the United States.

Next, we raised tens of millions of dollars privately to help Angelenos pay their rent … and then we built the largest emergency rental assistance program of any city in the country with government funds.

Together, we’ve already distributed over $200 million in direct assistance to Angelenos to pay for rent, utilities, and the basics.

Now, in Phase Two, L.A.’s Emergency Rental Assistance program is putting another $235 million in the hands of Angelenos. Together these efforts will help pay the rent of nearly 100,000 households that couldn’t. You heard that right — 100,000 households.

Tonight, I’m proud to announce that we are going to double down again: this summer, our city will put another $300 million in aid from the American Rescue Plan into the hands of Angelenos.

Money we can finally use to cover more rent and pay down more mortgages and utilities for both renters and homeowners.

Together, these efforts represent more than $700 million in direct assistance to Angelenos when they need it most.

But the pandemic didn’t start our housing crisis, and our success in eliminating so much rent won’t end it.

Loving Los Angeles means facing the bitter truth about our past — that maps of our city were drawn to protect the wealth of white people and destroy the wealth of Black people and other people of color.

Redlining and exclusionary zoning resulted in a city where today Black and Mexican-origin families hold 1/90th the wealth of white families on average.

It’s a city where Black people are overrepresented among those experiencing homelessness by a factor of four … and where Latino homelessness accounts for the greatest jump of newly- homeless Angelenos.

When it came to homelessness, this pandemic had lessons for us.

The threat of COVID finally led the federal and state governments to do something I’ve been banging the table about for a long time: treat an emergency like an emergency and offer a FEMA-level response.

Instead of fighting over crumbs to implement different homelessness solutions, we suddenly had real resources and the alignment from federal to state to local governments to begin moving the needle.

Our life-saving action allowed us to help thousands of our most vulnerable neighbors get into temporary shelters including trailers, motels, and hotels right away, and to move thousands more into housing.

Working with Governor Newsom and the state legislature, we bought twenty buildings in just three months … 

Now we are talking to the Biden Administration about building on these models nationally, and buying more buildings to convert into long-term permanent housing.

 Together with our successful advocacy for more federal homelessness dollars and thousands more housing vouchers, there’s real hope on the horizon in our fight to end homelessness.

But our justice budget won’t wait for the cavalry to arrive … We are putting our money where our heart is.

And so, today I’m announcing that for the first time ever, with the new money our budget is investing, we will dedicate nearly $1 billion towards ending homelessness.

To put that number in perspective — when I became mayor, we spent about $10 million on treating homelessness.

Starting July 1st, that number will be north of $950 million.