Column: Newsom and mayors meet to discuss homelessness. Have we hit rock bottom?
In an effort to address the housing and homelessness crisis, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa held a news conference Tuesday at City Hall to announce a plan to dramatically increase resources for city agencies assisting the homeless. Newsom, the chief liaison to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and CalWORKS, joined Villaraigosa, City Planning Commissioner Bob Guebert, and community advocates and other business and community leaders to discuss some of the City’s ongoing initiatives to improve the city’s approach to homelessness.
In a wide ranging discussion, Newsom said that the nation is moving toward the vision of a nation where everyone has access to affordable homes and a safe place to live.
“The nation’s homeless population has been shrinking for decades, and if the nation is to continue to grow we clearly need to do more,” Newsom told the gathering. “So, we need to do that through better and better housing, a wider range of options for everyone, and that requires a rethinking in what we’re doing in the way we’re dealing with the homeless.”
Newsom said the focus of the Mayor’s Office of Housing is housing, health care, and workforce. He said the office is working on a housing element to the city’s new homeless housing bond proposal and that there are currently 1,080 shelter beds and 30,000 emergency shelter beds. The majority of the city’s homeless population, Newsom said, is in shelters and, with two-thirds of the city’s homeless population, the vast majority of them are unsheltered. The mayor added that the majority of homeless are not mentally ill, and the city does not have a clear understanding of how many of these people are truly homeless. He said some of the city’s homeless people are living in cars, living under
