Homeless camp on a sidewalk in downtown Los Angeles, makeshift shelters made from tents and blankets. By Simone Hogan @ Shutterstock.com
The new mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, has declared a “state of emergency” in order to fight the city’s homelessness problem, which now affects an estimated 40,000 people. The emergency powers Bass will control allow her to cut through the city’s red tape and make it easier to build housing, and rent more space for sheltering the homeless. The Pasadena Star-News reports:
As her first act as mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass on Monday, Dec. 12, declared a state of emergency on homelessness, delivering on a promise she made on the campaign trail to treat the city’s homeless situation – which she called a “humanitarian crisis” – with urgency starting Day One of her administration.
By declaring a state of emergency, Bass and her administration can more aggressively confront roadblocks that have hampered or delayed efforts to address homelessness, fast-track the process for getting more housing built, and allow Bass, as director of the city’s Emergency Operations Organization, to coordinate a citywide response to homelessness.
Her administration will be able to remove rules and regulations that prevent or delay the construction of permanent and temporary housing for those living on the streets, expedite contracts that prioritize bringing homeless individuals indoors, and clear the way for the city to acquire rooms, properties or land to house Angelenos.
Bass pointed to how quickly the city rebuilt its freeways after the magnitude-6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994 during Mayor Richard Riordan’s administration.
“It’s because those projects were not run through the traditional process,” she said. “They were run through an emergency structure like the one we are harnessing today. We must drive a proactive citywide strategy that solves problems at scale and ultimately drives a solution.”
Democrats everywhere should look at what’s happening in LA. If your city or state has loaded up the permitting process and review processes with so much red tape it takes a declaration of emergency to make the city run again, that’s a problem. Instead, cities and states should be run in ways that make it easier for progress to happen all the time.
Action Line: Don’t live in places where mayors are forced to rule with unilateral authority to get anything done. That becomes a dictatorship in the mayor’s mansion. Instead, choose a home in one of America’s growth corridors. Start your search with my 2022 Super States. Your Survival Guy’s Super States are those that treat residents like valued customers rather than piggy banks to withdraw funds from. If you want to be one of the first to see my new 2023 Super States rankings, click here to subscribe to my free Survive & Thrive letter.
Originally posted on Your Survival Guy.
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