Published on Urbanize LA on Dec. 21, 2022
by Rick Cole and David Waite, ULI-LA and Homelessness Initiative Council members

The Los Angeles mayoral campaign is behind us. Homelessness was top of the agenda, but the time for setting lofty goals is over. Now is the time to deliver on them. Government can’t do it alone. To effectively confront the devastating conditions on our streets, we must focus on the root cause of homelessness. That’s the only way to end the suffering of the more than 60,000 unhoused individuals living amongst us in our county.

To be successful and sustainable, fighting homelessness in Los Angeles requires crisis intervention on two fronts: First, we must build more permanent housing and much more of it needs to be affordable. That is crucial both to stem the tide of those entering homelessness and to give those that are currently on the streets hope for a stable home. Second, we must build more transitional shelter of every type –more quickly and much, much more affordably. But shelter is not enough. We must provide the supportive services to aid our friends, neighbors and relatives to recover from the traumas of poverty, mental illness, drug and alcohol dependence and the other causes and effects of being unhoused.

For too long, these two goals have been posed against each other as if we should only focus on one or the other. But both are needed. Now.

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Read the full whitepaper: Housing Now! Cost-Effective, Rapidly Deployable, and Service-Integrated Housing Solutions