“I will not accept a homelessness crisis that afflicts more than 40,000 Angelenos and affects every one of us. It is a humanitarian crisis that takes the life of five people every day. … There will be no holding back on my watch.”
So said Karen Bass one year ago, as she declared a local emergency on homelessness during her first day as mayor of Los Angeles.
Twelve months later, as she wraps up her first year as the city’s chief executive, the mayor’s office reports that several thousand more people facing homelessness were placed in interim housing in 2023 than in 2022.
At the same time, there’s a good chance the city’s homeless population has grown, due in part to potential jumps in evictions this year. But any increases in the homeless population won’t be confirmed until after a formal annual count is conducted in January 2024.
So what do Angelenos, as well as the mayor herself, think about the past 12 months as Bass hits her one-year mark in office on Tuesday, Dec. 12?
“This year has gone by so fast,” Bass said during a meeting with San Fernando Valley business leaders last week. “Some days, it feels like it’s been three months, and some days it feels like it’s been three years.”
Below, we look back on the top issues Bass has tackled – from homelessness and housing to public safety and economic development – as well as her handling of emergencies like an unprecedented tropical storm and the 10 Freeway’s closure due to an intense fire that badly damaged the freeway. We also take a look at what the second year of the Bass administration might bring.
Homelessness and housing
First up, homelessness – or what Bass calls “a humanitarian crisis.”
Last week, the mayor’s office announced the city has provided interim housing to more than 21,000 people since Bass became mayor, including more than 1,950 brought indoors through her signature homeless program, Inside Safe.
The city has carried out at least 33 Inside Safe operations to clear out homeless encampments, including its first RV encampment last week. That encampment, near Griffith Park, had more than 50 RVs.
In an interview Monday, Dec. 11, Bass said she’s happy with the progress made during year one of her administration.
“It feels great, watching encampments disappear and knowing they weren’t just shuffled from one street to another,” she said on the eve of her first anniversary as mayor.
While “much, much more needs to be done,” Bass said she believes her administration got insight into what works or does not work “in the system,” and removed some barriers, and laid a foundation to further address homelessness.
But advocates for the homeless have raised some concerns about Inside Safe.
Eleanor Batista-Malat, a volunteer with Ktown for All, which does outreach among homeless people in Koreatown, said there are disparities in the Inside Safe operations depending on the City Council district.
Asked if she thought the program was successful, Batista-Malat said it depended on what one believed was the goal of Inside Safe.
“If you think the goal is reducing visible homelessness and moving people into hotels, it is doing that. But if the goal is permanent housing, I think it’s pretty clear that it’s not doing that,” Batista-Malat said.
She added that Ktown for All stresses being careful about not over-committing to unhoused people who have often been given broken promises made by the government or others.
“If they were told that it’s going to be three or six months of interim housing and it’s 18 months (instead), obviously there is still a benefit to being in a hotel versus being on the street, but it’s still … an institutional failure that they’re experiencing,” Batista-Malat said.
Bass recently acknowledged it’s taking much longer to move people from interim to permanent housing than she had expected. She thought people would live in interim housing for three to six months before being placed in permanent housing.
But that timeline has turned out to be more like a year-and-half to two years, due to a lack of permanent housing.
“I’ve always said that confronting this (homelessness) crisis is like peeling an onion,” Bass told reporters last week. “When you peel an onion, you cry along the way. Because every time we’ve taken a step forward, we find a barrier. … But we will continue to knock all of the barriers down until there are no Angelenos that are left to live and die on our streets.”
Other housing advocates and tenant rights advocates praised Bass for working to address the affordable housing crisis and offered suggestions for her.
“Although we haven’t always agreed with her approach, we applaud Mayor Bass’ commitment to solving L.A.’s housing crisis,” Cynthia Strathmann, executive director of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, said in a statement. “We would like to see her do more to prioritize Angelenos who live in less resourced parts of the city, and she can do more to ensure policies to kickstart development do not lead to displacement of low-income renters.”
Public safety
While violent crimes and homicides are down this year, Angelenos’ perception of whether things are safer hasn’t improved among many.
“I think there are quite a few folks that don’t necessarily feel that things are safer,” said Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry Commerce Association. In fact, he said, “I think that people feel that things have gotten worse.”
During a breakfast meeting with San Fernando Valley business owners and leaders last week, Bass heard that they are troubled by smash-and-grab incidents at retail stores and the challenges to public health due, in part, to unhoused people living on the streets.
Worries over retail theft among shoppers or business owners has lingered, even after the mayor’s office reported the arrests of 196 people and a 57% drop in organized retail crime since August when Bass formed a task force to confront smash-and-grab participants.
“People are fearful to go to a shopping center in case there’s a smash-and-grab,” said Nancy Hoffman Vanyek, president and CEO of the Greater San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce.
Waldman credited Bass for supporting an increase of officers at the Los Angeles Police Department, which earlier this year had dipped below 9,000, as one way to help address public safety. She supported a boost in LAPD’s budget, including raises and bonuses for officers. Last week, her office reported that in August 1,048 people applied to work at LAPD, the most in any month since September 2020.
“She definitely understands that we need more police, and that that is important,” Waldman said.
But not everyone sees it that way.
Bass’ support of adding police officers has put her at odds with a longtime friend, Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah.
Just as when Bass reached her 100-day mark as mayor, Abdullah said Bass still gets an “A” grade for her willingness to engage with the public. But she remains critical about Bass’ approach to policing.
To Bass’ credit, Abdullah said, the mayor has never refused a meeting with Black Lives Matter and even asked the organization to begin its annual work on “The People’s Budget” early — so Bass can take its requests into consideration when she creates her 2024-25 budget proposal.
But at the same time, Abdullah called Bass’ position on policing “disappointing.”
“She’s been very strong on engagement, but there is still really serious criticism that we have, especially around policing, especially around not just the police budget but the police contract — signing off on raises for police when other city workers, other workers throughout the city, don’t have anywhere near those kinds of deals,” Abdullah said.
Although Bass raised the wages of community intervention workers – which now start at $60,000, according to the mayor’s office – and increased funding for the city’s Gang Reduction and Youth Development program by $13 million, and increased investments in other community safety-related programs, Abdullah said the gap in total compensation between what a police officer and a community intervention worker makes is still too wide.
“(The mayor) is making choices that we don’t think are good for Los Angeles,” Abdullah said. “We know that interventionists are far more effective than LAPD at intervening and creating safer communities.”
Bass said she’s known Abdullah for years and consider her a friend, but acknowledged that when it comes to policing, they don’t always agree.
“We have respectful differences,” Bass said.
Economic development
Business leaders weren’t sure what to expect when Bass assumed office. They knew the candidate she beat out for the job, billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, saw things through a business lens. Bass, on the other hand, had spent many years in government, serving in either the California state Assembly or in Congress.
But one year into the job, Bass appears to be getting favorable ratings overall from the business community.
“The city hasn’t been very business friendly (in the past). … There’s still a lot of things (Bass) needs to work on … but she’s definitely making progress,” Hoffman Vanyek said.
Both she and Waldman said they never expected the mayor to tackle all of the city’s issues in one day but things are moving in the right direction.
In June, for example, Bass issued her fourth executive directive, aimed at helping small businesses open and operate in L.A. by creating a business steering committee to evaluate the state of commerce in the city and offer recommendations to further support businesses.
Business leaders have also expressed support for other executive directives Bass has issued to streamline processes related to development.
“Her executive directives have really been aimed at helping businesses. That’s the first time I’ve seen that attention to the business community in over a decade, maybe more,” Hoffman Vanyek said.
She added that while more can be done to cut red tape, people are noticing progress and credited Bass for hiring people for her team who have a strong understanding of economic development issues.
As Bass moves beyond her first year as mayor, Hoffman Vanyek said, she’d like to see the Bass administration continue to lower fees for businesses and tackle retail thefts and other crimes.
In addition, Hoffman Vanyek said the city needs to think about providing workforce housing to attract and retain talent, alongside other services like childcare facilities.
“It’s a big deal for business retention and attraction,” she said.
Emergency responses
So often elected officials are remembered not just for the policies they set, but their handling of emergencies like natural events and other disasters.
Bass and her administration were tested in August when the region’s first tropical storm in more than 80 years touched down in L.A. The storm was initially projected to be a full-blown hurricane, prompting Bass to order the activation of the city’s Emergency Operations Center to brace for what was to come.
It ended up downgraded to a tropical storm and no injuries were reported, but city officials said it was important to be prepared, including efforts to provide emergency shelter for the homeless.
About 2½ months later, Bass would again be tested in managing a crisis when a crucial part of the 10 Freeway running through downtown L.A. was temporarily shut down following a fire.
For several days, Angelenos saw images of Bass, often flanked by Gov. Gavin Newsom, holding press conferences or walking the area to assess damage where the fire started.
Early on, she urged Angelenos to unite to get through that crisis – and not jump to conclusions that a homeless person started the fire. Authorities have not found the responsible person, but are treating it as arson.
Jaime Regalado, emeritus professor of political science at Cal State Los Angeles, said Bass did “extremely well” in responding to the freeway closure. He hearkened back to then-Mayor Richard Riordan and his response to the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which collapsed part of the 10 Freeway near Culver City. Riordan was largely credited with getting the freeway reopened in record time.
Just as Riordan’s response in 1994 bolstered his image, Regalado said the most recent 10 Freeway closure and reopening helped the current mayor and the governor.
“She and Newsom gained an enormous amount of capital” not only for getting the freeway reopened much sooner than people expected, he said, but “also for being Johnny-on-the-spot and Grace-on-the-spot since Day 1. … (People) will remember that.”
For Northridge resident Doug Sentenac, Bass’ ability to leverage her connections with state and federal officials to provide resources quickly in response to the freeway closure was impressive.
The San Fernando Valley resident said he voted for Bass for that very reason – he’d hoped that her years in politics would result in connections with other politicians or officials, which would translate to more funding and resources for L.A. Even so, he said, “I was surprised that she was so successful so quickly.”
Looking ahead
Regalado said it’s difficult to evaluate a mayor after just one year when the issues facing Angelenos are daunting, and in a city that has a weak mayor system and strong City Council power dynamic.
But he believes Bass has the support of the vast majority of the City Council, noting that more than eight councilmembers, which is just over half of the council, often vote in favor of agenda items she supports. The last mayor to consistently have that level of council support was Tom Bradley, who served from 1973 to 1993, Regalado said.
“Her relationship with the council has been great because she’s collaborative. She has a history of being collaborative since she was a community organizer. That’s in her DNA,” Regalado said.
Regalado, who said he’s known Bass for about 45 years, believes the majority of Angelenos support her after one year as mayor.
“You have a mayor who’s talking about … issues point on and potential remedies,” he said. “She’s present and she talks in the present tense. She’s out there. She’s talking about the issues that mean something to the vast majority of Angelenos, not just to the voters.”
Bass, reflecting on her experiences as a congresswoman before she became mayor, said navigating local politics is much easier than dealing with national politics.
“It’s the difference between 15 people (on the City Council) and 435 (in Congress) and you need 218 (votes) to get anything done in Congress,” Bass said.
“Congress is extremely partisan and ideological. It’s no comparison. City Council is much easier” to navigate, she said, adding that she has “tremendous respect” for the City Council.
Bass said she’s able to see the impact of her decisions on the ground much more intimately as mayor than when she was legislating at the national level.
“I find it to be exhilarating, extremely rewarding,” she said of the past year.
So what can Angelenos expect from her and her administration in year two?
“I feel like year one, we had a number of accomplishments,” Bass said. “But we also laid a foundation to do more in year two.”