Using motels for housing and installing a new “senior level” city official are two potential solutions City Attorney Mike Feuer suggests to deal with the city’s rising homelessness.

“It’s incumbent on everyone in the city family to go above and beyond where we’ve been so far,” Feuer said during an Oct. 23 meeting with reporters at City Hall. “And I want to hold my office to that standard too.”

City Attorney Mike Feuer met with reporters on Monday to address the ongoing homeless crisis throughout the county. (photo by Luke Harold)

Homelessness in the city of Los Angeles jumped 20 percent between 2016 and 2017, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s annual homeless count. When Feuer served as 5th District councilman in the late 1990s, homelessness was generally confined to a few areas, such as skid row and Venice Beach. It now affects almost every neighborhood.

“Right now, we need to deliver,” Feuer said. “Anybody who walks in any neighborhood now has got to feel like the delivery needs to happen right away.”

While city leaders ponder long-term solutions for homelessness, conditions such as the hepatitis A outbreak require immediate solutions. Councilmen Mike Bonin, 11th District, and Jose Huizar, 14th District, last month introduced a motion calling for portable public restrooms. Their motion referred to San Francisco’s Pit Stop program, which offers public toilets, sinks, used needle receptacles and dog waste stations at 17 locations throughout the city that needed them most.

Other short-term measures could help people sleeping in their cars.

“In the very short term, during this transitional phase between the moment we have now and the moment we have adequate permanent supportive housing, we need to have some safe locations for people who have cars and that’s all they have,” Feuer said. “Because that beats the heck out of sleeping on the street.”

Using motels that have “anachronistic business models” for homeless housing could also provide immediate relief and circumvent the complexities of acquiring or building new housing.

“Here we have existing infrastructure,” he said. “You don’t need to buy the land, you don’t need to entitle it, you don’t need to build on it. There are no needs for a whole series of events that will slow down the process. These exist right now. Why don’t we transform them, if they’re not succeeding in our community, into housing for people who are homeless?”

An ordinance to make the idea a reality will go before the city’s Planning Commission next month, en route to consideration by the City Council.

As far as events that slow down the process, Feuer referred to a recently stalled housing project in Councilman Jose Huizar’s 14th district, which has the most homeless people out of L.A.’s 15 council districts, according to the latest homeless count results. The project would have created 49 units in a 90,000 square foot building that would have included 10,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space. The city’s Planning, Land Use and Management Committee upheld an appeal filed by Pedro A. Rosado and Marlene Rosado, of El Mercado de Los Angeles, on grounds of the California Environmental Quality Act.

Feuer has also been speaking to homeowners’ groups and other community organizations about the need to assist the homeless. They’ve been receptive, but it’s not easy getting them to agree on where exactly to place housing or other types of services.

“The more precise it gets, the more contentious it will be,” Feuer said. “I get that, but we need to be in communities, engaging neighborhoods because … the voters have entrusted leaders of our region with money from Measure HHH and Measure H. The question now is where are we going to put the services and the housing?”

Measure HHH, approved countywide in November 2016, authorized $1.2 billion in bonds to fund 10,000 housing units and services for the homeless.  Measure H, passed in March, created a 0.25 percent sales tax to fund homeless services. In June, the County Supervisors approved a spending plan that includes $19 million of outreach, $69 million to improve and expand the emergency shelter system, and $62 million for rapid rehousing services.

The city attorney’s idea for a “senior level” leader, someone who “lives and breathes this issue,” would oversee and coordinate the city’s efforts to combat homelessness.

“We need to treat homelessness like the emergency it is, and there needs to be someone tantamount to a FEMA director who’s terrific at logistics and execution who is in charge and everyone knows it,” he said.

Feuer said this role would differ from that of Meg Barclay, the city’s homeless coordinator, who oversees the implementation of the Comprehensive Homeless Strategy. The strategy deals with issues related to providing housing for the homeless, such as zoning, and instituted homelessness liaisons in various city departments.

In the interim, the city’s ongoing series of homeless citation clinics have helped homeless individuals resolve their unpaid citations in exchange for taking part in housing or other service programs. A recent one took place in Hollywood.

“It’s very important for every community to be helping in the homeless crisis that we have,” Feuer said. “… The key watch words for us right now need to begin with execution. We need a sense of urgency, a clear sense of mission and execution.”