Facing an enormous public outcry to solve homelessness in Los Angeles, nearly all of the leading candidates for mayor in 2022 agree on at least one thing: The problem of thousands of people sleeping in tents and RVs across the city is a crisis deserving of a disaster-level response.
In general, they concur with most of the voters in a poll released last week that thousands of new interim housing beds are needed right away. They said the city also needs to continue building permanent housing units, with roughly 40,000 homeless people in L.A., 70% of whom are unsheltered. And they largely agreed that the county’s mental health system needs to work more effectively and be expanded.
Where all this new interim housing would go and how it would be funded isn’t exactly clear.
The candidates were asked about their plans after the release of the poll, conducted by the Los Angeles Business Council Institute in coordination with The Times. It found that homelessness continues to rank as the dominant issue in the region, with 94% of voters viewing homelessness as a serious or very serious problem.
