Mayor Bass Signs Updated State of Emergency on Housing and Homelessness

Graphic by Brenda López

LOS ANGELES — On her first day in office, Mayor Bass declared a state of emergency to confront the homelessness crisis. After working with city council leadership, the mayor signed an updated local emergency declaration July 10 to allow the city to continue to respond urgently and aggressively to the crisis, including expedited contracting and streamlined processing of temporary housing and affordable housing projects.

The mayor’s executive directives issued shortly after the original emergency declaration will remain in effect thanks to the new emergency declaration issued under Section 8.33 of the city’s administrative code. This includes Executive Directive (ED) 1, which has streamlined the process for approval of affordable housing and permanent supportive housing for temporary and permanent housing.

Thus far, more than 450 projects totaling more than 8,000 units are potentially eligible to utilize ED 1. As of June, 22 projects, with more than 1,600 units, have received planning approvals in an average of 37 days. This is a time savings of at least 6 months in the planning approvals process. More than 3300 parcels of city-owned land have been reviewed under ED 3 to determine which could be suitable for interim and permanent housing.

In addition to other actions, the declaration allows the mayor to:

Coordinate citywide planning to urgently respond to the crisis; Secure contracts with service providers, builders and other vendors to deliver resources; Streamline processes associated with identifying and executing contract agreements; Call for the emergency service of city employees.

The updated directive also provides the City Council with more avenues for collaboration on the mayor’s emergency authority.

The updated declaration is supported by two of the three criteria listed in the new city ordinance recently enacted by city council (Los Angeles Administrative Code Section 8.33) related to housing supply and the number of unhoused people in the city compared with the number of interim beds.

The Los Angeles City Planning Department reports the city is 60.3% below the annual production goal for the eight-year RHNA cycle of 2021-2029. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reports that 16,521 interim beds exist and the recently released Point-In-Time count was 46,260 unhoused individuals in the city, well more than twice the number of interim beds.