LOS ANGELES, CA – With today’s settlement between the City of LA and the plaintiffs in LA Alliance for Human Rights et al. v. City of Los Angeles, LA County, Councilmember Bob Blumenfield offers this statement.

“Since 2020, I’ve been calling for an agreement to provide shelter and keep areas clear of encampments consistent with settlements in Orange County, and today there is thankfully some resolution. Each district in Los Angeles is bigger in population than 99 percent of America’s cities and today’s agreement makes a seemingly impossible task into one that is actually achievable.

“I’m incredibly grateful to Judge David O. Carter for forcing the County and City to the table with urgency and relentless determination. Because of his intervention in creating the Roadmap MOU with LA County, we’ve been able to swiftly create hundreds of units of interim housing through projects like our cabin communities in my district. The money used for those efforts would not have been available from the County of LA without Judge Carter’s hearings and I continue to be thankful to him.

“As we move more people indoors, we need the services to match beyond the Roadmap projects and beyond this Alliance settlement. The County receives millions of dollars to provide mental health services and half of Measure H monies go directly to their departments, yet we are not getting enough access to these services. To solve this humanitarian crisis, we need more intensive services for those on the streets, we need mental health and drug services on-site at our housing interventions, and we need County beds dedicated to those with addiction and serious mental health issues. And, we’d like to see more teams helping those who need it most. Unfortunately however, the County seems to be taking extraordinary steps to skate around their obligations. If we can’t reach agreement with the County, the City will be looking closely at options to create our own, city-run social services departments because the status quo is far beyond unacceptable.”