Mayor Eric Garcetti on Wednesday announced fresh initiatives, including a pilot program to provide housing and services to 100 homeless women living in Skid Row.
Speaking at a DTLA news conference, Garcetti said the city’s planning department had just released an implementation memo to give city employees and developers guidance on which projects qualify for exemption under the new state law Assembly Bill 1197 signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this month.
The law exempts transitional and affordable, low-income and supportive housing developments from the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. This law requires developers to identify potential environmental impacts of projects, inform the public and take efforts to mitigate those impacts. Critics have cited this law to contest the construction of homeless shelters and housing units.
In one case earlier this year, activists filed suit under CEQA to contest a new homeless shelter in Venice, citing “noise, litter, discharge of sewage,” and impacts to “public safety” as primary complaints.
Garcetti said the exemption will allow new projects to move forward quickly, removing some of the roadblocks that slow development. He pointed to estimates suggesting the legislation could produce over $120 million in savings, while simultaneously speeding each development by a year and a half. This will “ensure we can turn this act into action in the City of LA.”
He also announced a pilot program which will provide housing and services to 100 women living in Skid Row. Garcetti urged the city council to quickly approve a $1.5 million subsidy needed for the project, saying that 91% of women living on Skid Row have experienced sexual and domestic violence.
Garcetti also called on Nick Patsaouras, an engineer, urban planner, and public official to join his office as an unpaid volunteer. Patsaouras has worked with Garcetti in the past, helping him to accelerate the widening of the 405 freeway by a year. Garcetti called him a “dogged outside expert who won’t settle for excuses” with a “clear mission to cut through any red tape he can find.”
Garcetti mentioned some strides the city has made to combat homelessness. He detailed numerous projects that are at least 50% completed and said there are 151 fully funded projects in the pipeline. That would amount to 10,716 affordable and supportive units, comprising of 13,000 bedrooms for homeless Angelenos.
Since taking office in 2013, Garcetti has been forced to grapple with LA County’s ever-increasing homeless population – up from 39,463 to nearly 59,000. Garcetti, who called the crisis the most “urgent of our time,” said we must “get rid of the idea that we can snap our fingers and this problem will look like it’s gone away overnight. This is a five to 10-year horizon.”