Showing posts with label Homeless Veterans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homeless Veterans. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Saturday, September 21, 2019
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Mayor Garcetti's Letter to President Trump an Indictment of Incompetence!
The Mayor’s Office also hand-delivered the following letter to Trump’s team asking for increased federal assistance to combat homelessness in American cities
September 10, 2019
President Donald J. Trump
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Trump,
I appreciate your staff’s visit to Los Angeles this week to learn about our city’s work on homelessness. Any day that our nation’s federal leaders are willing to listen to Americans living in our 19,000 local communities across this country about the challenges that they face is a good day.
To cut to the chase, if you are committed to working with America’s cities and local leaders to address the national epidemic of homelessness there’s a lot you and your Administration can do. While homelessness has increased in cities across the United States in recent years, it’s a problem that predates your administration and mine.
This is a crisis decades in the making. Homeless Americans share one thing in common--trauma. Whether it is a veteran on our streets suffering from PTSD, a woman who has survived domestic violence, or a family whose breadwinner suffers a workplace injury and can’t make the rent, Americans need your help.
Our country faces an ever-higher cost of living, a national economy that has hollowed out our middle-class and federal government cuts to vital housing funds and social services. We hope the federal government can be part of the solution.
In Los Angeles, we are taking bold steps forward. Our voters approved the two largest anti-homeless ballot measures in our nation’s history. Together, they expand outreach services, mental health care, shelter beds, and permanent affordable housing with services by more than $4.5 billion over a decade. This money, together with private, state, and faith-based sources of funding we have increased the number of people we are housing from about 9,000 in 2014 to more than 21,000 last year.
President Donald J. Trump
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Trump,
I appreciate your staff’s visit to Los Angeles this week to learn about our city’s work on homelessness. Any day that our nation’s federal leaders are willing to listen to Americans living in our 19,000 local communities across this country about the challenges that they face is a good day.
To cut to the chase, if you are committed to working with America’s cities and local leaders to address the national epidemic of homelessness there’s a lot you and your Administration can do. While homelessness has increased in cities across the United States in recent years, it’s a problem that predates your administration and mine.
This is a crisis decades in the making. Homeless Americans share one thing in common--trauma. Whether it is a veteran on our streets suffering from PTSD, a woman who has survived domestic violence, or a family whose breadwinner suffers a workplace injury and can’t make the rent, Americans need your help.
Our country faces an ever-higher cost of living, a national economy that has hollowed out our middle-class and federal government cuts to vital housing funds and social services. We hope the federal government can be part of the solution.
In Los Angeles, we are taking bold steps forward. Our voters approved the two largest anti-homeless ballot measures in our nation’s history. Together, they expand outreach services, mental health care, shelter beds, and permanent affordable housing with services by more than $4.5 billion over a decade. This money, together with private, state, and faith-based sources of funding we have increased the number of people we are housing from about 9,000 in 2014 to more than 21,000 last year.
At the most recent conference on homelessness in Washington DC, Los Angeles was seen as a national model for our comprehensive approach to homelessness. We are also addressing the conditions on our streets, with tens of millions of dollars for clean-ups, including hiring Americans experiencing homelessness as sanitation workers cleaning up our hardest-hit neighborhoods. But it is clear that no local government, including ours, can address homelessness on our own.
For many years, the federal government has woefully underfunded our housing safety net, contributing to homelessness. The federal government cut HUD funding for the production of new housing and preservation by 31% for the 2016-2018 time period, and according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, only one in four low-income families who qualify for housing assistance actually receive it. This pressure is acutely felt here in Los Angeles, where 36,000 people experience homelessness on any given night.
Unfortunately, far too many veterans are homeless in Los Angeles and across America, abandoned by our federal government after they defend our nation in the Armed Forces. Veterans comprise 13% of our country’s homeless population, compared with 7% of our country’s total population. While Los Angeles has seen a 41% reduction in veteran’s homelessness, the most recent count showed 3,886 Angeleno veterans were homeless. Federal programs to house veterans' are successful, yet underfunded.
If you and your Administration would like to help Los Angeles and other American cities confront our homelessness crisis, I urge you to take the following actions immediately and work with America’s communities to bring all Americans home:
For many years, the federal government has woefully underfunded our housing safety net, contributing to homelessness. The federal government cut HUD funding for the production of new housing and preservation by 31% for the 2016-2018 time period, and according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, only one in four low-income families who qualify for housing assistance actually receive it. This pressure is acutely felt here in Los Angeles, where 36,000 people experience homelessness on any given night.
Unfortunately, far too many veterans are homeless in Los Angeles and across America, abandoned by our federal government after they defend our nation in the Armed Forces. Veterans comprise 13% of our country’s homeless population, compared with 7% of our country’s total population. While Los Angeles has seen a 41% reduction in veteran’s homelessness, the most recent count showed 3,886 Angeleno veterans were homeless. Federal programs to house veterans' are successful, yet underfunded.
If you and your Administration would like to help Los Angeles and other American cities confront our homelessness crisis, I urge you to take the following actions immediately and work with America’s communities to bring all Americans home:
- Support the bipartisan Fighting Homelessness Through Services & Housing Act, S. 923 and the End Homelessness Act, H.R. 1856 which further expand the housing safety net with new grants and mental health programs to help cities combat homelessness over the next five years;
- Uphold the Veteran Administration’s vision to build at least 1,200 units of housing for homeless veterans on the West LA VA Campus by providing capital funding for new housing development and addressing the severe infrastructure needs of this federal land;
- In your FY2021 Budget Request, build up the nation’s housing safety net and support higher appropriations for the programs that have been proven to solve homelessness and create economic opportunities for hard-working Americans. Some of those critical programs are: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) Homeless Assistance Grants, HUD’s block grant programs (HOME, CDBG, HOPWA, and ESG), HUD’s project-based and tenant-based rental assistance programs (including HUD-VASH), capital and operating funds for the nation’s dwindling supply of public housing, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and the VA’s Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) program;
- Rescind HUD’s proposed rules to evict mixed-status immigrant families from assisted housing and prevent transgender homeless people from accessing federally funded shelters; and
- Protect critical fair housing laws by upholding the previous administration’s “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” and “Disparate Impact” rules.
We must put politics aside when it comes to responding to this heartbreaking humanitarian crisis. I hope you will provide the federal assistance that is needed to help cities stop homelessness in America and help our veterans and most vulnerable of citizens. This is our watch. This is our time. This must be done. I look forward to working with you and your Administration on this issue.
Sincerely,
Eric Garcetti
Mayor
City of Los Angeles
Sincerely,
Eric Garcetti
Mayor
City of Los Angeles
Saturday, August 3, 2019
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Wednesday, July 17, 2019
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Saturday, June 29, 2019
FLASHBACK: The Los Angeles Times: Mayor Eric Garcetti pledges to end veteran homelessness in 2015
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| Getty |
Mayor Eric Garcetti committed Wednesday to accept the Obama administration's challenge to end veteran homelessness in Los Angeles in the next 17 months, saying he will not accept that "veterans live in our city without a place of their own."
Garcetti's pledge came during an appearance in Century City with First Lady Michelle Obama, who told 900 business and labor leaders, politicians and homeless advocates at the Unite for Veterans Summit that success in Los Angeles County is crucial to meeting the administration's homelessness goal. The county has the most homeless veterans in the country, more than 6,300.
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Friday, June 21, 2019
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Saturday, June 15, 2019
UPDATE: News Conference
UPDATE: Wed, June 19th, 2019. News Conference on filing official paperwork to
Recall L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Where: Steps of L.A. City Hall
200 N. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA
When: 11:00am
NBC4: Group Says LA is a Death Camp for Homeless and They Want Mayor Garcetti Gone
Sign the petition here
Recall L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Where: Steps of L.A. City Hall
200 N. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA
When: 11:00am
NBC4: Group Says LA is a Death Camp for Homeless and They Want Mayor Garcetti Gone
Sign the petition here
Friday, June 14, 2019
Los Angeles Daily News: L.A.’s chief auditor urges transparency over city’s use of Prop. HHH homeless funds
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| Photo Credit: Alex Datig |
Citing the results of the 2019 homeless count, L.A. City Controller Ron Galperin on Wednesday urged leaders to more closely look at what’s happening to available public dollars targeted to combat the problem, which has been cascading across the city.
“Angelenos need to know where their money is going and deserve better results,” Galperin said in a statement reminding the public of his office’s first analysis of Proposition HHH spending in his recent Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.
Homelessness is up 16% over last year in the city and 12% countywide — and in the San Fernando Valley, the problem is also acute, jumping to 6,772 from 6,621 last year, according to results released last week for the January count. The annual count reported that nearly 59,000 people in L.A. County are now homeless, with 23% of those experiencing homelessness without shelter.
Galperin — the auditor and chief accounting officer for the city — noted L.A. has not been using all of its readily available funds to combat homelessness. Of the $86.4 million available funds provided by the voter-approved bond measure HHH, Galperin’s annual report said Los Angeles used only $4.5 million in the fiscal year 2018.
Furthermore, as of January, according to the City Controller’s office, $362 million in HHH funds were readily available and in total, $34 million has been spent.
With all of these spent funds, no new housing units have actually been built. Rather, the City Controller’s office says the funds have been used for pre-construction or construction.
“It has been two-and-a-half years since L.A. voters approved Measure HHH to spend $1.2 billion to create 10,000 supportive housing units,” Galperin said in a press release last week. “While nobody expected these units to be built overnight, at this moment not one HHH project has been completed. And the average total development cost per unit is nearly $520,000.”
More
Sign the petition here
Thursday, June 13, 2019
U.S. News: The Homeless Are Dying in Record Numbers on the Streets of Los Angeles. More than 918 died in 2018.
A record number of homeless people — 918 last year alone — are dying across Los Angeles County, on bus benches, hillsides, railroad tracks and sidewalks.
Deaths have jumped 76% in the past five years, outpacing the growth of the homeless population, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of the coroner's data.
Health officials and experts have not pinpointed a single cause for the sharp increase in deaths, but they say rising substance abuse may be a major reason. The surge also reflects growth in the number of people who are chronically homeless and those who don't typically use shelters, which means more people are living longer on the streets with serious physical and behavioral health issues, they say.
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