Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti declared a “shelter crisis” today to provide emergency housing to some of the estimated 25,237 unsheltered homeless residents who call the city home.
As part of the declaration, the city will ease or eliminate restrictions on new homeless shelters, allowing them to be quickly built on land owned or leased by the city. It will also ease the process of establishing shelters at existing churches and nonprofit centers.
“This is the right thing to do,” Garcetti said. “It’s the moral thing to do.”
The crisis declaration is more meaningful after the passage of a new state law that allows cities to expedite ground-up construction of new shelter housing on publicly owned property. That housing will give homeless residents a place to stay while they get connected with necessary resources to find permanent housing, Garcetti said.
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