L.A. animal shelters are critically overcrowded and understaffed.
The problem has gotten so bad that a trip down to one of the city-run shelters reveals the severity with just a quick glance around. L.A. Animal Services General Manager Staycee Dains describes this issue at the L.A. City Council’s Neighborhoods and Community Enrichment Committee meeting this morning.
Dains: Right now we are putting animals in every single available cage. We are purchasing cages. We are using donated cages and crates — popping them up in the hallways and in areas where animals are not safely housed.
Dains says there’s about one staff member for every 100 animals at any given time in the city’s six shelters. The industry standard is one staff member for every 30 animals.
To address these issues, the city is considering a pause for new breeding permits. The neighborhoods committee voted unanimously to introduce this ordinance, which will be brought back to the full council at a future meeting for a more formal vote.
Hernandez: And as a city, we gotta step up.
L.A. Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez says the city needs to do better to help animals in the shelters.
Hernandez: We can’t keep trying to do this with band-aids when we got arterial bleeds happening.
Dains was appointed to the general manager role in June. Since she started, she’s been working to address these issues across the city. Pausing the breeding licenses is just one aspect of the goals she’s discussed over the past few months.
Dains: The importance of a moratorium is to signal to the community clearly that our shelters are not in any position to take in one more animal. Organizations that are very pro-breeding are not organizations that do anything to help animals in animal shelters. They’re simply creating animals for us to kill later on.
Speakers at the meeting were concerned at the state of breeders in the city and called for more to be done than just pausing licenses. L.A. resident Daniel Guss said the issue goes beyond licensed breeders.
Guss: You have a problem for overcrowding for backyard breeders and abandonment. There is a tire business in my neighborhood that has a breeder permit. A tire business that breeds pitbulls. It’s nice to stop the breeder permits, but that’s not the problem.
More than 1,000 permits have already been issued so far this year. Dains says there isn’t any kind of oversight after a permit is issued. After applicants pay the $250 fee, they’re given the permit without any other regulation besides a yearly renewal.
Sasha Abelson, an L.A. resident who runs a rescue in the city, says the lack of oversight is overwhelming local rescues who can’t keep up.
Abelson: We are, as rescues, battling every single day to try and provide free and low-cost spay and neuter, and the city is working against us by issuing these permits, and I don’t understand why.
If approved, the ordinance will pause breeding licenses immediately until the shelter system’s capacity falls below 75% full. It would also be automatically reinstated if the capacity rises above 75% once again in the future.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Angelina Hicks.