0
0
LA Mayor Karen Bass Issues Affordable Housing Ordinance But Can She Fix Homelessness via Reparations
Once again, I had the honor and the privilege to ask the Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass directly about her office working with the Los Angeles Reparations Advisory Commission through the city’s Civil Rights, Human Rights and Equity department just a week after the State of California’s Reparations Task Force proposed its final recommendations for Reparations for African-Americans on both the national and local level.
When it comes to housing, the harm done was housing discrimination. We’ve seen this time and time again, the displacement of seemingly similar groups, lumped as one having to give up their own housing on the basis of color codes: black, brown, and red for those described as white. To understand this nuance and nuisance, would require one to go so far back to the origins of this nation to properly understand how those who have been racially and disproportionally rendered homeless make up the majority of the unhoused then you’d begin to understand the various scenarios that forced these families and individuals to be chronically homeless in the first place. In 2020, HR 40: The Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act was introduced to the House while Mayor Bass was a U.S. congressional member so it is hard to accept that with all the information and resources available the solution of applying Reparations to these racially disadvantaged segments of the population hasn’t been considered and suggested. There is a disconnect in pairing these remedies that go far beyond housing.
