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In August, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a critical agreement to help bring more unhoused people suffering from homelessness in Los Angeles inside faster. The agreement allows those in temporary housing, including in tiny homes, A Bridge Home housing, or motels through Inside Safe, to be placed in permanent housing faster by cutting through bureaucracy.
Months prior, Los Angeles and four other cities signed a historic memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the White House to tackle unsheltered homelessness. One of the key goals for the Bass administration in entering this agreement was to secure commitments from the federal government to relax regulations.
On September 6th, Mayor Karen Bass hosted Tom Perez, Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, in Los Angeles to deepen the ongoing partnership between the City and the federal government.
Mayor Bass and Director Perez toured Skid Row and joined regional elected leaders including Los Angeles City Councilmembers, local mayors and members of the County Board of Supervisors such as Hilda Solis and Holly Mitchell as part of their focused discussion on solutions to urgently confront the homelessness crisis.
“It was great to have Director Perez visit Los Angeles to meet with local leaders and see areas of Skid Row as we continue to confront the homelessness crisis with all levels of government,” said Mayor Karen Bass. “I always welcome the opportunity to host a White House representative in L.A., so that our federal partners can continue to understand the challenges that we face in Los Angeles and the solutions that we must fully embrace to meet this moment. Together, we can harness our power and the power in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., as our state and federal delegations are the largest in California and in the country.”
“We have to work in partnership, and the scale of the challenges confronting our unhoused people here is enormous, we know that, and what we talked about most is that the homelessness crisis is going to take a whole of government approach and we are going to work together,” said Tom Perez, Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. “I am very proud of what President Biden has done with his investment in Los Angeles. We know that Los Angeles can, under the leadership of Mayor Bass, become a model of how we build out community mental health infrastructure, how we address the challenges of people experiencing homelessness and transform their lives for the better. We are all in this together.”
