By Chris Legras, Jaime Page : westsidecurrent – excerpt (include audio track)

In the latest installment of the Current’s investigation into failures in our city and state’s approach to the homelessness crisis, we explore Governor Gavin Newsom’s “Largest Mobilization of Small Homes”

LOS ANGELES – One of the great challenges in understanding the failures of the City and County of Los Angeles and the State of California to effectively address the homelessness crisis is identifying the full panoply of funding state, county and city agencies have brought to bear, and the myriad public agencies involved.

In the Westside Current’s ongoing investigation into these failures, particularly the thousands of unoccupied homeless housing units, we look at a signature program from Governor Gavin Newsom. In two rounds of funding from a state program called the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) initiative, the state allocated two rounds of funding, each amounting to $1 billion. Within these allocations, the City of Los Angeles was granted approximately $144 million to address homelessness.

In March 2023, the governor announced the release of an additional $1 billion through a fourth round of HHAP. The money was intended to help cities rapidly provide transitional housing for thousands, including the deployment of 1,200 units of “tiny homes” statewide. LA received an additional $86.5 million in this round, mostly to purchase and install 500 tiny homes throughout the city.

Under the strategy, the State would purchase the homes and the California National Guard would assist in preparing and delivering them to cities, “free of charge and ready for occupancy.”

Despite the enthusiastic announcement and an emergency order from the Mayor at the time, tangible progress on the tiny home initiative has been elusive. As of the end of May, not a single home has been constructed. The only tangible progress the city has made is submitting a list of potential locations for the housing units to the state.…(more)