Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez, 6th District, and Councilman Herb Wesson, 10th District, are calling for the creation of the People’s Bailout Los Angeles, a major job creation program throughout Los Angeles to offer sustainable employment after the immediate threat of COVID-19 has decreased.

The program will include infrastructure projects to bring economic and environmental justice to historically-disadvantaged communities. The program will create jobs in neighborhoods where people are unemployed to better meet their needs, Wesson said. Those needs include child care and other services for program participants themselves. Other short-term efforts may include jobs delivering food to seniors and members of other at-risk populations. There could also be an effort to establish a network of individuals tasked with making daily phone calls to constituents to make sure their needs are being met, Wesson said.

The core emphasis of the program would be community needs projects such as the rehabilitation of abandoned or substandard housing, greening measures such as weatherization and solar installations in private dwellings, the construction of new affordable housing units and the creation and improvement of new and existing public parks and community spaces. In the medium- to long-term, the city may instruct the Economic and Workforce Development Department to seek private employment initiatives for projects that serve the public good.

The program also could expand and improve the quality of public services in health and child care, education, recreation, elder care and cultural enrichment. Special projects could be undertaken in each of these areas, and existing levels of service delivery could be enhanced.

To move forward, the city will need significant financial assistance from the federal and state governments. In preparation, Martinez and Wesson plan to allocate discretionary funds to create community-level task forces to determine what projects are needed in individual neighborhoods, and will instruct city departments to conduct feasibility studies for projects.