Our city and our neighborhoods are facing a homelessness crisis. The numbers of homeless people are growing. Encampments are springing up in residential neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles. More and more people are living in vehicles on our streets.

There are approximately 44,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County.  Nearly 70% of them are unsheltered on any given night– one of the highest percentages of unsheltered homelessness in the nation.  There are an estimated 1,000 people who are homeless and unsheltered in Venice, living in tents, encampments, and vehicles.

In response, many Venetians are demanding increased services and housing. Others are demanding increased law enforcement and zero tolerance. The federal government - both the courts and the administration - have criticized the City of Los Angeles for policies that criminalize homelessness and have called on the City to dramatically increase alternatives to living on the streets.

In the past two years, City and County officials have added outreach teams, deployed mental health workers, and created special programs in Venice.  But we have yet to create the supply of housing, shelter and other services required to move people off the streets.  Recently, I proposed a State of Shelter Crisis to address the problem at the City level. At the same time, I am working with the Mayor and the County Board of Supervisors to develop a region-wide strategy with a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Both the county and city will be unveiling their strategies in January, and we hope to have them adopted in February.

To properly address this crisis, Los Angeles needs to build thousands of units of affordable housing and permanent supportive housing. But even if we start spending ten times more money and building ten times more housing, we will have tens of thousands of people throughout LA without shelter for years. That's not acceptable. We need to create more alternatives to living on the streets, and until we do, we need to deal with the impacts of tens of thousands of people who currently live in sidewalk encampments.

To do this right, every neighborhood in Los Angeles will need to do its part. The policy choices and programmatic options are tough, and the details are complex. I want to share those choices with you, and get your feedback about how Venice should respond.  Please complete the survey below and share it with your friends and neighbors. Homelessness in Los Angeles is a crisis, and we need to work together to solve it.

Thank you,
Mike