LA’s Homeless: Garcetti Drags His Feet, Wesson Tweets! This is a Shelter Crisis, Not a PR Problem!

WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH Y OUR MEASURE HHH DOLLARS?--City Council President Herb Wesson, who has watched Mayor Eric Garcetti drag his feet for more than a year, building NO units of housing to shelter the homeless with voter-approved “Measure HHH” homeless funds, tweeted out a catchy PR campaign today that in no way moves the dime.

 
The Coalition to Preserve LA, one of very few civic groups that regularly attends the Prop. HHH Citizens Oversight Committee, has issued numerous updates on the failures by City Hall: the piles of red tape, Byzantine rules, back-patting. All of this, even as Los Angeles becomes the focus of worldwide media for its growing humanitarian crisis.
 
This is our Katrina. In response to Mr. Wesson’s Twitter pledge today that all 15 City Council members will allow 222 units of homeless housing in their Council Districts each year until 2020, the Coalition to Preserve LA calls for the following MEANINGFUL responses:

A “Right to Shelter “pledge, mirroring the leadership shown by New York City, and formally announced by Mayor Eric Garcetti, Herb Wesson and the entire City Council
A formal emergency declaration by Mayor Eric Garcetti, Herb Wesson and the entire City Council that Los Angeles is mired in an emergency, not a lesser “shelter crisis.”

An “off the streets” pledge by Mayor Eric Garcetti, Herb Wesson and the entire City Council that all homeless residents of L.A. will be under shelter by the end of 2018.

We urge the public, the media, and policy makers who are not a part of City Hall’s internal, self-inflicted delays and tunnel vision, to read our 2018 “Outrage of the Day” series, starting with:

 
“City Hall has Feet of Clay”

“A Short History of City Council Promises”  

“L.A. is U.S. Leader in Unsheltered Homeless”

“Garcetti Paralyzed on the Homeless”

"City Hall's Luxury Housing ‘Trickle Down’ Falsehood”

A few major organizations tied to Wesson’s PR campaign are claiming that “local opposition” has slowed the construction of homeless housing. This is utterly UNTRUE and unfair.
 
The city is nearly two years away from erecting its first housing units due to its incredibly tangled, shockingly unprepared response, to having been handed $1.2 billion by L.A. voters. The UN monitor who visited Skid Row this year blamed City Hall policy, not city residents.
 
Too bad the mayor was in South Carolina this week pursuing other interests amidst this crisis.

(Ileana Wachtel writes for 2preservela and is an occasional contributor to CityWatch.) 

-cw