After announcing that the police budget will not be increasing, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the city administrative officer had identified $250 million in cuts so that money can be funneled for jobs, health, education and healing in the Black community as well as communities of color, women and others who have been left behind.
“Will this involve cuts?” Garcetti said at a press conference last week. “Yes, of course, to every department, including the police department, because we all have to be a part of this solution to them.”
Mayor Garcetti’s decision comes on the heels of ongoing national unrest staged by Black Lives Matter, a racial justice advocacy group, as a result of the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who was pinned to the ground and killed on May 25 by Derek Chauvin, a police officer.
“Every study will show that African Americans are significantly disproportionately represented in the unsheltered population and yet they are only 12% of the national population so unfortunately, homelessness is another example of the systemic inequalities in our country,” said Daniel Conway, policy adviser to LA Alliance for Human Rights, which filed a federal lawsuit against Los Angeles over sheltering the homeless and won.
Last month, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California ordered Los Angeles officials to provide housing or shelter space for homeless people living near freeways. Mediation with the LA Alliance for Human Rights is set for Thursday June 11.
“I don't know if any determination has been made about how those funds will actually be used but I had the thought and realization when that announcement was made that the mayor would shift funds away from the police department into other social services right at the time that we’re having a conversation with the city so I am encouraged by that announcement but we'll see if it actually translates into programs and systems that will help the unsheltered,” Conway told the Southern California Record.
Mayor Garcetti said at the press conference that his priority is to ensure that Black Americans see an end to the days of murder in broad daylight and traffic stops merely because of their skin color.
“If you have seen the massive peaceful demonstrations in our city or if you participated in them, it is time to move our rhetoric towards actions to end racism in our society and to never forget,” he said.
The complaint filed on March 10 identified several locations where the homeless can be housed. They include:
- Hundreds of acres adjacent to Los Angeles Airport (LAX) are owned and controlled by Los Angeles and could support thousands of beds.
- The abandoned Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) building in Hawthorne.
- The County’s General Hospital Building with 1.5 million square feet of space in the heart of East L.A. has been vacant for more than a decade.
- St. Vincent Medical Center, a 366-bed facility, is closing and both the City and County are in talks about purchasing it.
- The County owns over 200 acres of the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds (Fairplex) in Pomona but it is currently being leased to the non-profit Los Angeles County Fair Association.
- Some 13,948 separate properties within the City are owned by various public entities, many of which are vacant or underutilized.