Mayor Garcetti at October 2015 Mayoral Summit where he announced his goal of getting linkage fees from developers to finance affordable housing.
Los Angeles has the least affordable housing in the United States. It is short some 500,000 units of housing for its population. Rising population, which pushes up land, materials, and labors costs, has made affordable housing in California a mostly unprofitable investment. Cities throughout the state have found themselves facing chronic and deepening housing shortages, with increasingly unaffordable rents. The response has been to look to government subsidies to try to fill the gap.
County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas at May 31 homeless count press conference. Mayor Garcetti and CD8 Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson look on.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) announced the results of its January 2017 countywide homeless count May 31. Since January 2016 there were now 13,940 more homeless people in LA County and 5,725 in the city, increases of 23% and 20%. There are now 57,794 homeless in the county, of which 42,966 are unsheltered, living on the streets. For the city it is 34,189, with 25,237 unsheltered.
Median rents in Los Angeles increased 32% between 2000 and 2017, according to a May 2017 report by the Public Policy Institute of California. Over the same period, household income decreased by 3% when adjusted for inflation. The real estate website Trulia reports that in Spring 2017 the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles was $2,600. A UC Berkeley study by the Urban Analytics Lab found a slightly lower figure, at $2,499. In large parts of Los Angeles this is more than the total annual median household income. In the Adams-Normandie section of South Los Angeles, median household income is $29,000 a year, or $2,417 a month; in Watts it is $25,000, or $2,083 a month.
Contested lot at Lorena and East 1st Street in Boyle Heights, proposed site of a 49 unit apartment house, half for mentally ill homeless people. El Mercado shopping center (at the right of the photo) has led the opposition to the project and been supported by Jose Huizar, chair of the Los Angeles City Council Planning and Land Use Management Committee.
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T.H.E. (To Help Everyone) clinic at 3834 S Western Avenue, LA 90062
Free healthcare for the homeless and their children is widely available in SPA 6 ranging from just north of the 10 Freeway down to Compton and Lynwood. We list below one full hospital, 12 free clinics for families and adults, 7 school clinics, plus a mobile clinic that hits one location twice a week and 15 more once a month. All provide free medical care for those unable to pay, and have a sliding scale for those a little better off. Some, but not all, offer dental care as well. Most will help eligible patients sign up for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) or Medi-Cal.
President Trump’s proposed $54 billion cutback in discretionary spending in order to fund a matching increase in the military budget hits hardest at programs for the poor and homeless. The most obvious is the $6.2 billion from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
