The city has announced a US$100 million plan to address the problem but critics say much more is needed.Officials in Los Angeles labeled homelessness an "emergency" and announced plans to offer permanent housing and shelters for more than 20,000 homeless people in the city.
“These are our fellow Angelinos,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said Tuesday as he announced the plan outside City Hall. “They are those who have no other place to go, and they are literally here where we work, a symbol of our city’s intense crisis.”
Over the past two years, the number of people living in the streets increased from 23,000 to 26,000 according to official figures from Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
Nearly 18,000 people of the total live on the streets as opposed to shelters. The city, the second largest in the country, currently spends over US$13 million of its general funding on homeless programs, such as winter shelters, housing vouchers and outreach to homeless veterans, said Assistant City Administrative Officer Ben Ceja.
Other major cities in the U.S. have been battling with homelessness as well. In New York city, official figures show that there are more than 67,000 homeless people – almost double the number in Los Angeles.
While the mayor announced a US$100 million budget for the anti-homelessness plan, critics say that it would not be enough to fix the growing problem. “A hundred million dollars won’t even buy all the homeless (people) pillows,” Alice Callaghan, a longtime advocate for the homeless in city, told the Associated Press Wednesday. “A hundred million certainly won’t build much housing – and what we really have here is a housing crisis.”
In a recent report in April, the U.S.-based National Alliance to End Homelessness said that 578,424 people were experiencing homelessness in the U.S. in 2014, meaning they were sleeping outside or in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program.
While the report said the recent economic recovery in the U.S. has slightly reduced homelessness, it also warned that many were still at risk of not being able to afford housing.
“Longitudinal trends and changes from 2012 to 2013 indicate populations at risk of homelessness may not be experiencing the benefits of the economic recovery,” the report said.
Source : Telesur
Post a Comment