Mitchell said she has focused on “urgently scaling proven tools like redirecting funding for necessary mental health services while introducing income programs to help stabilize working families and small businesses.”
Mitchell said she launched a countywide RV encampment pilot program to get unhoused residents out of RVs and into housing, and to help prevent homelessness, co-authored a motion to allow small landlords to recoup unpaid rent.
“Affordable housing preservation and production need to be a top issue for every policymaker if we are to reduce homelessness, and we need everyone to help us increase the stock of affordable housing in the county,” Mitchell said.
Williams said L.A. County must open more permanent supportive housing programs with comprehensive social services. The county must also address housing affordability by developing housing subsidy programs to help low-income families afford their rents, Williams said.
“By implementing structural housing programs with supportive services for the homeless and low-income families, we can reduce the revolving door to homelessness by 60%,” Williams said.
Carlton said that to address the needs of an estimated 22,655 unhoused people in the county with substance use disorders, he would push the county to contract with nonprofit organizations to retrofit former hospitals, hotels, or department stores into 24/7 substance use disorder treatment centers for unhoused residents.
These facilities would offer detox, treatment, job training, and other supports “aimed at helping them reintegrate into society,” Carlton said.
Bradford said she would push to reverse a motion by Mitchell and Supervisor Hilda L. Solis proclaiming L.A. County a “housing first county” and directing county lobbyists to fight any legislation in Sacramento that wasn’t housing first. Bradford said she’d also push county lobbyists to fight to amend Senate Bill 1380, a law Mitchell authored in 2016, another housing first effort.
The law “offers services as needed and requested on a voluntary basis and doesn’t not make participation in services mandatory in order to receive housing. Program services should be mandatory,” Bradford said, adding that partnering with law enforcement was another important aspect to the county’s homeless crisis response.