Starting Jan. 1, the city of Los Angeles will start paying $80 a night for transitional housing beds, a move some homeless service providers say will help keep them from going out of business. was announced on Friday.
The City Council voted 12-0 to approve new fees for transitional housing beds. City Administrator Matt Szabo said the new rates include more staff and improved services.
“We need to ensure that sites that haven’t seen interest rate increases for years during a period of high inflation don’t shut down in the coming months. This is a real threat,” said City Councilor Nithya Raman. . Chair of the City Council Housing and Homelessness Committee.
Councilors John Lee and Monica Rodriguez opposed the new tax rate, while colleague Imelda Padilla was absent from the vote.
They argued that rates should be raised to $69 per bed per night to maintain service.
Current bed rates range from $40 to $60 depending on programs such as overnight secure parking, bridge housing, winter shelters, and tiny home villages. Crisis housing for families costs the most, at about $99 per night for motels, or $115.50 per night.
Rodriguez criticized the existing system, citing continued failures by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and service providers in providing transparency and data.
“You’ll never get a direct answer about the services being provided,” Rodriguez said. “We cannot continue to aid and abet this broken system that is wasting taxpayer dollars, especially at a time when we are facing a severe fiscal crisis.”
Raman acknowledged “legitimate criticism” of the troubled homeless services system.
The councilman said members of the Homeless Commission have made progress in overseeing the city’s spending on homelessness, which hasn’t been the case in the past.
“A few years ago, after HHH measures, COVID-19 relief, and the expansion of general funds to Inside Safe, we had a very small system,” Raman said. “We’re spending so much money on homelessness right now, but that money was often spent under some sort of sense of urgency or emergency.”
She added that as the city prepares to receive funding from the recently approved Measure A, this is an opportunity to hit the reset button.
Szabo noted that while the city could use existing funds to cover the $80 fee, spending on new beds would be very limited.
City Councilman Bob Blumenfield, chairman of the Budget, Innovation and Finance Committee, hopes Mission is talking about closing 14 different facilities in the 3rd District, which includes the West San Fernando Valley area. said.
“I’m really concerned that if we don’t raise the rates, we’re going to lose sites and put more people on the streets,” Blumenfield said. “I emphasize what everyone has said about this because everyone is just telling the truth and different sides of it.”
The Greater LA Coalition on Homelessness, a network of more than 50 service providers and supportive housing developers, previously called on the city to increase bed rates to $139 per bed per night, the full cost of the service. .
“Today’s vote by the Los Angeles City Council to increase the transitional housing bed rate to $80 in January is a step in the right direction, but it is not enough to address the current crisis. Residential developments are likely to be closed,” Jerry Jones, executive director of the coalition, said in a statement.
The City Council last week approved a new bed rate of $89 per bed per night, effective July 1, 2025.
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