Episode 303: Special Presentation | Hope for the Unhoused, presented by Roosevelt House

Harold Holzer:
Good evening, everyone. That's better. I'm Harold Holzer, and I have thehonor of serving as director of Roosevelt House. And on behalf of HunterPresident Nancy Cantor, it's a pleasure to welcome you tonight for a veryspecial event with a very special guest, the mayor of Los Angeles, theHonorable Karen Bass. Now, I know that you know that New York and Los Angelesare engaged at the moment in a rather emotional rivalry out in Queens. Andwhile everyone in New York thinks that we know everything about everything,including sports, of course, I think we all agree, oh, we would not be here inthe crowding into this room. We all know that we have a lot to learn from LosAngeles. where the issue of housing the unhoused is concerned.

And that subject is just one of the topics that have broughtus together this evening to hear about Mayor Bass's innovative approach tohomelessness, to discuss the whole gamut of municipal challenges that face thebig cities on both American coasts and, of course, in between. as someone whoworked briefly for a New York mayor, as well as for a governor, and twodifferent candidates for mayor, although it's only two people, even thoughthose are for different jobs. And one of those people also served as a pioneeringcongresswoman, and I'm talking about Bella Abzug, Hunter class of 1942, andclass president of 1942. Speaking for her, this is a very convoluted sentencehere. Speaking for her, and I was her spokesman, so I did speak for her, Isuspect this kind of dialogue is just what Bella's idol, I'm coming to thepoint now, her idol, Eleanor Roosevelt, had in mind.

Because the same year Bella graduated, Eleanor helpednegotiate the sale of this, her longtime New York City home, to Hunter Collegeas a center for student harmony, and civic engagement of the highest order.Eighty years ago, when the official transfer was made, deeding this house tothe college Eleanor represented her husband at Hunter's brand-new main campusassembly hall, which of course had been built by FDR's Public WorksAdministration. Many mayors of different cities from, you know, from David Dinkinsto Pete Buttigieg have appeared here at Roosevelt House, but that ceremony wasenlivened by New York's crusading mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. And it's notablethat together with FDR, and we must confess, Bob Caro, forgive me, RobertMoses, had begun building more units of public housing for the poor than anyadministration ever. And that was during the Great Depression.

So with that complex but compelling legacy in mind, this isindeed the perfect place, and that was the point I started about two pages ago,to welcome our distinguished guests, the building that served as the transitionheadquarters for FDR after his election to the presidency, and thus served asthe birthplace of the New Deal, and also served as the springboard forEleanor's own life of activism. in pursuit of social justice, civil rights,women's rights, and global human rights. Um, there are so many people to, I seein the audience who I should acknowledge, but certainly Gillian Sorensen, whois bringing the Sorensen Center to Roosevelt House in due course. Um, it's, uh,all but done and we're excited to have her here. not the first time she's beenhere, but another of the many times we hope to welcome her and do programs withher in the future. And I also want to acknowledge New York's favorite daughter,former borough president, and city council member, the great Gail Brewer.

So with that, let me, let me introduce our guests. It's aspecial honor, as I said, to welcome Karen Bass, the 43rd mayor of Los Angeles,and the first Black woman to lead that city of 3.8 million people. She is a LosAngeles native who went to Cal State, San Diego State, and USC for her master'sin social work. I guess nobody's perfect. She was a long way from the SilbermanSchool at Hunter College, so we can forgive her that. Longtime communityactivist, Mayor Bass served for six years in the California State Assembly,rising to majority leader, and then for two years, was the 67th speaker, and asusual for this groundbreaking public servant, the first black woman to holdthat post, from which she championed improvements in the child welfare system,in cultural redevelopment and tax reform, despite a severe budget crisis. In2010, she was elected to Congress, where she served six terms with greatdistinction, until her election as mayor, serving on the Judiciary Committee,and at one point, chairing the Congressional Black Caucus.

In City Hall, she turned immediately to work on thehomelessness crisis by declaring a citywide state of emergency, and then moved21,000 unsheltered people indoors in her first year in office, signingexecutive orders to fast-track the process of building affordable housing,initiatives we hope to hear much more about this evening. She has also beenextremely nuanced on housing development, which I hope to hear more about,respecting the special status of LA's historical districts, and acknowledgingdensity issues in single-home communities. Her interlocutor this evening willbe her one-time House colleague, Carolyn Maloney, who ably representedManhattan's East Side and parts of Brooklyn and Queens for 15 terms inCongress, working tirelessly and effectively on 9-11 compensation, credit cardreform, many, many other issues, rising to chair the House Oversight Committee.And she's serving her second year as our Eleanor Roosevelt Distinguished Leaderin Residence.

So she's serving two years, she has to run again next year.And she's already led student trips, student cohorts, focused largely on heruntiring commitment to ratify, or maybe a better way to say it, working withCarol Jenkins, to acknowledge and certify the ratification of the ERA. So thisis a meeting of giants. housekeeping. We will have a conversation of about 40or 45 minutes, followed by an opportunity for you to ask questions of your own.During that process, I know you all have wonderful voices, but please wait forthe microphones to be brought to you so that our Zoom audience can also benefitfrom hearing your questions. After the program, we will all adjourn to the FourFreedoms Room upstairs, the Roosevelt's former dining rooms, for a reception inhonor of Mayor Bass. And with that, please join me in welcoming Los AngelesMayor Karen Bass in conversation with New York's own Carolyn Maloney.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
First of all, I want to thank all of you for coming to Roosevelt House. Iam so pleased to welcome you and our special guest, Mayor Bass. Our nation's asecond largest city, and they have some of the same complexities and challengesthat we have in New York. Maybe we have a little more. So I'm very interestedin how she approached these challenges and solved many of them. We have a verysmall but mighty staff here at Roosevelt House, and they went beyond the callof duty in putting this together. I want to thank them, and I see some of ouradvisory committee chairs and board members here, so please join me in thankingthem for their hard work to make this happen.

Quite honestly, Karen Bass is one of my favorite formercolleagues. I loved working with her. She was extremely effective. She was thechair of the subcommittee on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and we workedclosely together on foster care on a task force that she formed while she wasin Congress. We also worked very hard on a bill that I authored The DebbieSmith bill, we reauthorized it two or three times, and it has been called themost important anti-rape bill ever. In short, she was an outstanding member ofCongress. And she has a history of first, as Harold pointed out, as the firstAfrican-American woman in our nation's history to lead the lower house of anystate legislative body, probably one of the most difficult jobs in government.and also a member of Congress and the first mayor of Los Angeles. Some wouldsay that leaving Congress to go to mayor of Los Angeles is leaving the nationalstage to go to a state stage. And it must have been a very difficult decisionand a high risk. What made you do it? And was it a tough decision to make?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Well, first of all, thank you, everyone, for having me here. And it's verynice to connect again with my esteemed colleague, Congresswoman Maloney. We'vetraveled. We've been to Africa together. We've done a lot of different trips.And thank you. I also think it's so appropriate, your title, the EleanorRoosevelt Distinguished Leader in Residence, that so suits you. Socongratulations to Hunter College and the Roosevelt House for doing that. Itwas a tough decision. I didn't leave because I was tired of Congress at all. Asa matter of fact, the hardest part of the decision, though, was leaving theforeign affairs. I chaired the subcommittee on Africa, and that was a bigfocus. But I was compelled to go home because I was worried that Los Angeleswas getting ready to make a sharp turn to the right. And I didn't want to seethat happen. And I had spent, you know, a few decades with other activistsmoving LA in a more progressive direction. LA was not a union town. It was muchmore conservative, you know, 30 years ago. And after all of that time, the ideathat we would flip back and move to the right over the issue of homelessness.

And ironically, 30 years ago, I was working on it, butduring those years, the homeless population was in South Central Los Angelesand Skid Row, and nobody was really concerned. Now the problem has exploded tobe everywhere. And I know you have some of this in New York. I haven't beenhere in a while, but the tents, tent cities, encampments, which I think a lotof people viewed as individuals and don't realize that the encampments, thetents, are actually small communities. And they had exploded so much in everyarea, the affluent areas, inner city areas that a lot of people in Los Angeleswas reaching the point where they said, just get rid of these people. I reallydon't care what happens to them. And that's what concerned me. So in our city,our population of the unhoused is about 46,000. If you look at our county, it's70,000. So that is a massive, massive problem. So I did take a big risk becauseI most certainly didn't know I would win, especially when one of Los Angeles'billionaires jumped in the race.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
Well, you mentioned that the homelessness and the fight over how toapproach it was one of the main reasons that you left. And we were sorry to seeyou go. You were such an outstanding member. But during her first year, this isamazing, she moved more than 21,000 people. out of the roughly 70,000 she'stalking about into housing. So basically from 2022 to 2024, there was a 17%drop in homelessness. And I find this an amazing accomplishment. And I have tomention we have one of our city council, two of our city council members here,a distinguished Gail Brewer introduced earlier, but Eric Botcher. And I wouldsay this is one of the biggest problems we're confronting now. I'm so happy tosee you here to talk about it with her. But how did you do it? How did you doit?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Well, let me qualify that number. Because I'm proud of the number. But whatthat doesn't tell you is the inflow. And that's what's really, really aproblem. And I don't know of any city that has mastered that. So you can get200 people off the street and 215 more are on the street. the very next day.And so we've also launched, we've launched a comprehensive approach in severaldifferent ways. One of our areas is to prevent people from becoming unhoused.So we're focusing on people who face eviction. And because of actions that ourcity council took, We now know every eviction, we know who's gonna be evictedand what their name and their address is. So becoming mayor, I also inheritedtwo nonprofits that previous mayors had. One of them is called the Mayor'sFund. And my previous colleague, Eric Garcetti, who's now the ambassador toIndia, he used the Mayor's Fund to deal with COVID, with families that weremost in need.

So when I took over, I repurposed it to focus onhomelessness prevention. The bottom line with this is we're experimentingbecause we don't have a model that we can replicate. But I was telling Carolyn,for the council members, I know your numbers might be higher in New York, butyou guys have handled the problem better. And so 20 years ago when I came herelooking at what you guys were doing, I was in the state legislature.Unfortunately, we didn't emulate it. But what you did was you guys invested in interimhousing. You bought apartment buildings and hotels. What we did was rigidlyheld to the dogma of housing first. Now, I believe in housing first.

Of course I do. But the way it was implemented in LA reallymeant stay in a tent until we build you something. They didn't mean that, youknow what I mean? But that's actually what happened. As opposed to thinkingthat we need some place for people to be for a couple of years, I think thatwe, you know, a lot of times policies are done with great intentions at themoment. But then down the line, there's unintended consequences. So I'm surewhen L.A. rigidly held to that is because they didn't want to see peoplelanguish in shelters, and they wanted to push the building. But even thoughI've passed measures to expedite building, building's building. It still takesa couple of years. We didn't account for that.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
Well, Karen has also just been appointed chair of the Homeless Committeefor the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and I believe they are looking atreplicating what you did in California to other cities and other states, andcan you comment on that in your work there and what's happening there?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Sure, well, one thing is that it is extremely helpful to me that I servedin Congress and served in the state legislature. And one thing about Congressis that, you know, you're there for a long time and you develop lifelongrelationships, whether you're there or not. That's why when she calls, I come.So what I did was when I took over at the Task Force on Homelessness, then Iimmediately started organizing mayors with a focus on Republican mayors, by theway. And so we took 40 mayors to DC earlier this year. We met with the WhiteHouse, we met with the Senate, we met with the House, and we were focused onone specific area of policy, which you guys might be interested in knowing,After a year and a half, we finally changed this policy. We don't realize thata lot of policies we have on every level cause people to be homeless or keeppeople on the streets.

So listen to this one. They're really crazy, too. If you'rea veteran and we give you veterans benefits, we count those benefits as yourincome. And then we tell you make too much money, so I won't give you thehousing voucher. So all around the country, we have thousands of empty beds.and vouchers, and veterans can't have them because they make too much money.Just like, and by the way, one of the crusades that your congresswoman wagednobly, unfortunately every year, was the health benefits for the 9-11 survivors.You should have never had to do that. And no veteran should ever have to choosebetween their benefits or a housing voucher.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
Well, with your help, we finally passed it and made it an entitlement, theonly entitlement authored by an individual congressperson. The rest of theentitlements are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.

Mayor Karen Bass:
Every year, she would wear the fireman's uniform on Congress.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
Well, while you're on it. While you audit, what should the federalgovernment be doing to address housing? Let me tell you, Carter was the lastpresident that really put money, serious money, behind housing.

Mayor Karen Bass:
We have another one coming up.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
Oh, yes, that's right. Big priority. Had to get that in there. We haveanother great one coming up.

Mayor Karen Bass:
But let me let me just on the veteran piece. So, you know, so it waschanged like 95% of it was a couple little glitches so veterans vouchers nowcan be used by any veteran and Also, we raised the amount of rent because justlike New York and LA I mean, you know, we don't pay Nebraska rents so having avoucher that pays You know, $1,500 doesn't do anything for us in our cities. Sowe were able to raise the amount. So now you might want to think about that. Ispoke to Secretary McDonough yesterday, and I asked him, I want to do now a bigPR campaign in L.A. It might be something you think about, too, calling onAngelenos to do their patriotic duty and take in a veteran. and have the money,you know, and the veteran. Now the glitch we're dealing with now is we need theVA to process the veterans, which you will too. So my appeal to McDonough isspeed it up. We got the vouchers. We have the beds. We need the veterans.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
What would your wish be for federal help and support besides veteranschanges and funding?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Well, you know, we need to repeat what happened after World War II. Youknow, when there was housing built everywhere, of course it was segregated, soAfrican Americans couldn't take advantage of it, but, you know, this time weneed to have a housing boom. One policy we did in LA, because again, like Isaid, you can do policies and then there's unintended consequences. So I didone that had unintended consequences, and so I had to change it. That was myexecutive directive one that essentially fast-tracked building and whathappened is a for-profit developers found a couple of loopholes. and we'regetting ready to like wipe out neighborhoods and stuff. And some people haveinterpreted that as being protective of the wealthy.

Actually, I was being, I am being protective of the innercity because what they were getting ready, they only wanted to buy in the innercity, which would have displaced a lot of people. So I'm just a big believerthat when you do policies, you gotta evaluate the policies. You have to havemetrics, gotta have outcomes. You can't just do policies and then walk away.But unfortunately, too many people in our profession do that. We do policiesand we celebrate the policy and never look back.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
You're so right. And you've been working on a new approach to preventpeople from falling into homelessness. Can you talk about that aspect of yourstrategy?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Sure. That's the Mayor's Fund. And what we do when we see that someone isgoing to be evicted, the courts have to report that information to us, then wesend outreach workers out. Number one, a lot of times when people are on themargins, They might not realize they actually qualify for a lot of publicbenefits, so we help them qualify for whatever is available, but we also supplylegal support because most of the time, you know, people are not represented,but the landlord is. And just being represented alone is enough to prevent aneviction. So this is experiment. I also am having it evaluated by an outsideacademic to make sure it's actually making a difference. I'm not trying to doit just to make a point. I want to know whether this works. But around thecountry, we have to come up with innovative ways to prevent people from fallinginto homelessness.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
In your attempts to address homelessness, what was new and what was simplyan improvement on what was already done before, being more efficient?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Well, a lot of things were already being done before. But within our city,there was a lot of finger pointing between the city and the county, the state,the federal government. Everybody was pointing fingers at each other. So one ofthe first things I focused it on was unifying the public sector. So we're allworking in sync now. and not pointing fingers. And we are, our gap though isthe private sector. So bringing in the private sector, we started anotherorganization that's another 501c3 that is called LA4LA. And that's where we'relooking at private investors, you know, to come in on projects, you know,understanding people wanna return. It's not gonna be a big return, some return.And of course, we're looking for philanthropic support too. so that we can moveinto buying buildings, because again, building buildings just takes too long,even when you expedite it.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
Well, part of your strategy was moving people into hotels, which we aredoing here in New York, and renting interim housing, but it's very, veryexpensive. What are some of the other strategies we can have to implement tobring the costs down and reach scale?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Yeah, what we're doing now is definitely not financially sustainable longterm. So we are putting people in motels. But when I came in, it was first ofall, on my first day, I didn't go to City Hall, I went to the emergencydepartment and put the city in a state of emergency, which gave me additionalauthority and the ability to expedite things. Our city needed to see tents godown. That's what they needed to see. Understanding that the system isfundamentally broke, but if I had come into office and said, I'm going to spendsix months studying why it's broke, the city would have blown up.

So I focused on a program called Inside Safe, getting peopleoff the street, because I wanted to dispel the myth. I was gambling. I didn'tknow if I could dispel it, but we did. It is just not true that people want tobe on those streets. People do not want to live like that. And so we do nothave a problem getting people off the street. Our problem is not having enoughrooms. The other big problem from my point of view that we've not solved yet,but I'm dead set on solving it, and that is the appropriate services. So weprovide services, but they're not adequate in my point of view. One of my manylives, I've been around for a while, was in healthcare. And so I also view thisissue from a health lens. And to me, that is woefully inadequate. And I'm notjust talking about mental health and substance abuse. I'm talking aboutdiabetes and hypertension and dental care and the basics is really notadequately provided for.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
Well, talking about your response and how you acted on your very first daythat you were sworn into office, you announced a state of emergency forhomelessness in the city and moved to take steps to help. How did homelessnessbecome such a huge problem, so out of scale, so overwhelming in Los Angeles?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Well, and this is a national phenomenon. I mean, my view of it is that itis the outcome of very bad policies that were done in the 90s, and over time,the shredding of our social safety net. And I mean, I watched this happen, andall of us did. And we fought it every step of the way. We didn't win. And sothe other thing is that it's really important to view the unhoused populationfor who they are, and there's a variety of reasons why people are unhoused.Some of our policies make people unhoused. For example, I mentioned theveterans. Foster care, when kids, quote unquote, are emancipated, which is ahorrible term in my view, either 18 or 21, we literally pack your bags and saygoodbye. Now, all of us are middle class here. Not a one of our kids could havesurvived when they were 18 if they weren't texting us five times a day, and weweren't there to do everything they needed.

So you just imagine your 18-year-old being put on thestreet, what would happen? They spend a few months couch surfing, and thenthey're on the street. If you're a girl, you're liable to end up trafficked.And that is what we have done as a society. When we downsized our prisonsystem, which many of us, like myself, fought for, I was very upset when thepolicies were in place and nobody prepared what was going to happen when theygot out of jail. Now, our fastest growing sector of the unhoused population, andI bet it is yours too, are people in their late 60s and 70s, elders.

Disproportionately women, of course disproportionatelypeople of color, but just think about it for a minute. You spent your lifeworking in the service sector, no pension, no 501c3 in New York and LA, if youhave social security that can buy you lunch. It was not gonna house you. Andyour rent goes up when you can no longer work and you don't have a family totake you in, you're on the street. And if you look at, well, people who arementally ill are using drugs, but understand that it's a chicken and egg.Because a lot of people in LA, in spite of our temperature, a lot of people inLA use meth when they become homeless to stay awake at night so they survive.And I challenge any of you to sleep on the street for two weeks and tell meyour mental health is the same.

So we tend to pass judgment on individual behavior with notunderstanding the consequences. But we shredded our safety net. I mean, youknow, Reagan started it by block granting. Everybody thinks of mental healthwith Reagan, but they started the block granting. They called it devolution foranybody that remembers those policies. It sounded nice and fancy. All it waswas the federal government divesting from social safety net. So we let all ofthese things fall. And then welfare reform, of course. I remember when welfarereform was being proposed in the 90s, I was running a nonprofit organization.We did everything we could to fight it. Because we knew that then the nextcategory of homeless were gonna be women and children. Prior to welfare reform,that was not the case. And so systematically over the years, all of thesepolicies, now I haven't even mentioned the price of housing. Obviously that'sone, but people tend to reduce it all to the price of housing, and it is morecomplicated than that.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
Well, have you gotten bipartisan support for your initiatives?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Well, you know, L.A. is, New York and L.A. are the same, we're blue, blue,blue. We don't have Republicans on our city council. Oh, you like that, and wedon't have Republicans on our, no. But I certainly got, there is bipartisansupport in the U.S. Conference of Mayors, absolutely, and that's why it wasimportant to bring Republican mayors to Washington DC. But from DC, from ourperspective when we were there, this was viewed as a problem of democraticcities. But now the economic situation is such that people are experiencing anunhoused population everywhere.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
And you mentioned the veterans. What are the specific challenges forhomeless veterans, and aren't they a larger percentage in the homeless, or avery large percentage?

Mayor Karen Bass:
No, they are a percentage, but they're not the largest percentage, no. Ithink, you know, the biggest thing is, is that, you know, our veterans havesome challenges. Some veterans have difficulty going inside, by the way. Andsome people who have difficulty going inside, this is sad, but sometimesthey'll take their tents inside. And so it's a process for people to leave thatspace. I know I found that over the years in working with formerly incarceratedpeople, sometimes have difficulty and feel better in a smaller space. So youhave to deal with the specific needs of the veterans.

But I'm gambling, and you can ask me in a few months whetherthis works. Half the time I try stuff. I don't know if it's gonna work, but yougotta try, right? With this campaign, I think that the public will be moreempathetic and take in a veteran. I think people are empathetic towards seniorcitizens. People are empathetic to know that one of the reasons why women areunhoused is because of domestic violence. We have 9,000 children who areunhoused on our streets, and I'm sure your numbers are probably the same too,in and out of school, hiding in cars. A lot of times the children are notnecessarily in tents. Sometimes you don't see these people because they'rehiding, especially the women and children. They don't want Children'sProtective Services to come take their kids away.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
And to talk about challenges, you also have the challenge of climatechange, and what is that impacting on housing and the unhoused, and what areyou doing about it?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Well, thank you for asking that. I think that's where we're so lucky in ourcities because, you know, climate change is not, I know it's not acontroversial subject here. Where we were, it was a debate, you know? I mean,the guy that brought, remember the guy that brought the snowball to say that itgets cold? Those are our senators. But the way climate change in this issue isimpacting us is our climate emergencies and emergency shelters were onlyrelated to rain and coal.

And, you know, it does rain occasionally in L.A., and itdoes get cold occasionally. But we didn't think about shelters in heat, and nowwe have to. Because we've gone through, you know, it's still hot in L.A. It canstay hot in L.A. throughout October. And sometimes we have heat waves inOctober. So I think last week in some areas it was triple digit. And if you canfry an egg on a sidewalk, then what do you think happens to the unhousedpopulation? The other thing is that we don't really have shelters for thembecause a lot of our shelters during the cold don't have air conditioning.That's the other thing in L.A. A lot of housing has no air conditioning becausewe haven't needed them and now we do.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
What about the wildfires? Is that affecting the unhoused?

Mayor Karen Bass:
It is affecting the unhoused. And it's very dangerous because there areunhoused people that camp up in the mountains. And the wildfires now, I mean,we've always had fires, but because of climate change, now it's like fires. Weused to have fire season. It's kind of like we don't have fire season anymore.Fires can happen at any time. And they also are devastating. I never rememberpeople dying in wildfires. But they do now. And so you can have unhoused peopleoftentimes get blamed for starting the wildfires. We do have a real problemwith fires related to unhoused folks because they start fires to cook, theystart fires for heat. And in some places in the city, the number one reason thefire department is called is to put out fires related to the unhoused.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
Moving to a more pleasant subject, I read that Los Angeles is in the middleof world events, that you're going to have the World Cup in 2026. We sharethat. And four years away from hosting the Olympics. You want to comment on howthat happened and what you're looking forward to? It didn't happen by me.

Mayor Karen Bass:
I ran to deal with the homelessness issue. But my predecessor was awardedthe Olympics. Los Angeles will be one of three cities in history to host theOlympics three times, 1932, 84, and 28. So I do have a series of events comingup. In 2026, at the beginning, all-star basketball game. A few months later, USOpen for golf for women. Then we both share the World Cup. You have the lastone, we have the first one. We have eight games, but in both of our cities, theWorld Cup is 40 days.

So whether a game is here or not, there's gonna be events.2027, we have the Super Bowl, then we get around to the Olympics. So we have alot going on and I am hoping that all of this will help fast track housing andgetting our people housed because we don't want the world to come to LA to see,you know, refugee, I mean, some of these places look worse than refugee camps,at least refugee camps are organized. But anyway, yes, so we have a lot, lot,lot going on.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
Sounds exciting. Well, Madam Mayor, you are coming up on your two-yearanniversary of being in office. Can you share what it was like to serve thepeople of Los Angeles for the last two years? Well, was it harder thanCongress?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Times 20? You'll appreciate this. I had three weeks to transition to beingmayor. My election took a minute for the results to be decided, and then I hadto take office. I've never worked for the city before. As a matter of fact,when I went into the mayor's office the first time, I kind of looked around andwent, hmm, I've only been here about three times. And usually when I would cometo City Hall, I was bringing 200 residents with me because we were protestingsome land use situation.

And so it was interesting taking over. It's beenexhilarating. Because for me, it feels like my life has come full circle. Mostof my life, I was an activist, a community organizer. My day job was working inthe emergency room at the county hospital and also at the university at themedical school. So I was working on all of this stuff as a volunteer, and thenI started a social justice nonprofit. That eventually led to me running office.So issues I've been working on for over 30 years, I now am in the cat's birdseat, and I get an opportunity to do something. So it's kind of instantgratification, whereas in Congress, you work for years, you get to think longterm, you get to become an expert, but you can choose your issues. I can'tchoose these issues.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
I love mayors. They were my favorite members of Congress because they justwanted to get things done and were used to getting things done. And what Iloved about the city council, I served on the city council for 10 years, isthat you see the policies affecting people's lives. We are locked up there, butyou can see the policies being translated into helping people.

Mayor Karen Bass:
Do you guys have term limits? Eight years?

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
We are at Hunter College, and we have many outstanding students here, so wewould like you to give them some advice. Would you encourage them to enterpublic life, to help people? Do you think they're gonna be discouraged thatthey can't help as fast as they want to? What advice would you give to ourstudents that are studying now here at Hunter College?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Well, you know, to me, there is nothing more rewarding in life than to helpfolks and to make a difference that's bigger than just your own self. But tome, running for office is one area. Again, first time I ran for office, I wasin my 50s. So the majority of my life was spent outside being an activist. Andso there's roles for you to make a difference in so many different ways. And Iwould just say, if you are interested in running for office, as our speaker,Pelosi, would say, know your why. Why? Why are you doing it? Sometimes peopleapproach me and they want to run for office and they don't really know why.They think there's something glamorous about it. I don't know about you guys.You found any glamour? Did you find any glamour? I haven't. It's very, veryhard work. But again, it's just extremely rewarding. There's nothing morerewarding to me than to go out with the outreach workers and to talk to folksin a tent and to tell them, you know, you deserve more than this. You know, no oneshould live like this. Come on inside. Nothing beats that.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
Well, thank you. And now we're going to go to questions. Lots of questions.The lady with the

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Thank you so much, Michelle D.Winfield. Thank you. And I will say, unfortunately, we cannot clone theHonorable Carol Maloney, the Honorable Gail Brewer, or the Honorable EricBotcher. We can't clone you. But what I wanted to ask you, and thank you forcoming, in your two years Were you able to make a dent with the foster care toassist them? Because here, when they age out, we give them apartments, if theydon't have a job, for $40 a month. And if they have a job, $400 a month.

Mayor Karen Bass:
Wow, that's a big difference. I hope they're making something that paysthat. Anyway, you know, just a little bit. In our city, which it might be likeNew York too, the foster care system is governed by the county, not by thecity. But one of these nonprofits, again, that I inherited, the one that I saidwas focused on preventing homelessness and focusing on eviction, the other partof it is focusing on are young people who are aging out of the foster caresystem. Number one, connecting them up with benefits, and number two, findingthem housing. We do have some housing, but again, one of the things that youdid in New York that we're afraid to do is the right to housing. There's a lotof people that are interested in that, but you have done a better job at thatthan we have.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
This gentleman.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Good evening. I'm a civil rights lawyer. My first homeless client was 1982.I'm really inspired by what you have to say. You understand it, and you get it.So thank you very much. My two questions, one, if you can sit in LA, I've hadcalls from the Skid Row people over the years. In New York, we created a streethomeless advocacy project, which is all volunteers. We get a different kind ofpeople. They're not interested in a salary. In fact, a couple of, raise yourhands, some students at Hunter who are part of our team here. We've got about18 students at Hunter going out Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, volunteers.Have you considered doing something similar, especially at the colleges in LA?

And second, when you talk about the motels and hotels, wouldyou consider, I've tried it, we haven't succeeded here, using eminent domain?Eminent domain's public crisis. Government, why do you keep having to pay monthafter month for the rooms when you can seize the property and then long-termdon't have that kind of cost. And it's ideal because the motels, as youprobably know, if you have single rooms, especially with a bathroom, which themotels and hotels are all set up for, if you had 100 tonight, we could get 100people off the streets and get them on the road to recovery.

Mayor Karen Bass:
So I love the idea of eminent domain. And actually, the communityorganization I started many years ago, that's what we wanted to use. Theproblem is that if you think it takes a long time to build eminent domain, sowe succeeded in eminent domain in South Central LA. It took us 15 years. But Iwill tell you, though, we are still trying. So we have motels that this waswhat we were doing. And if you have some information for me, I will readilytake it. We have motels. The reason why in the 90s we were trying to take overthe motels is because we had 54 motels in the inner city and no tourists. Nowyou know what was going on. So we felt we could deal with two problems at onetime. We could deal with the criminal activity by seizing the motel and usingit for something constructive. Unfortunately, fast forward 30 years, we weren'table to do that.

But now, we actually, because those same motels are doingthe same thing, and by the way, the girls that are trafficked there now, almostall of them are former foster children. And by the way, they are not women. Icalled them girls for a reason. And so that's the only reason. It's not, so weare using it, but unfortunately, it just takes too long. But because there'scriminal activity going on, we are able to go after some of those, and we aredoing that now. But if you have information, I would love to see that. And thenyou mentioned volunteers. We have volunteers like that also. They're not runout of the city, but they are there. One thing we're doing with students is, Imean, from one working in healthcare and then also social work, everybody hasto do clinical hours to graduate. And so having social work students doclinical hours and get their hour credit for working with us is something thatwe're working on now. I also, because I was so concerned about the healthcarepart of it, I just put a physician on my staff to help raise the standards.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
We'll go to three or four.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
OK. Yes. I'm an Angeleno. I'mhomesick. One of the things I did here at Hunter was I read a paper abouthomelessness. And they talked about the mental illness. And they seemed toalways link it with drugs. But I was realizing, how come nobody points out thathomelessness, can homelessness make a person mentally ill? Yes. Absolutely.Yes. Thank you. Thank you. That's the first answer I've had. The other issue isthe chronic NIMBY-ness when that Sears, that wonderful old Sears building wenton and on Soto Street and they were talking of making it homeless, I thoughtthat was a perfect housing location. It was on its own block and yet theneighbors still protested against it. How are we going to deal with the NIMBYsand the people who are just not letting these things happen?

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
I have good news for you. Excellent. We're going to take three morequestions.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I live in Boston, Massachusetts, andthere's a remarkable doctor who started an organization called Health Care forthe Homeless, and they have a van that goes around the city every night becausethere are often people who need to be rescued from the cold or whatever itmight be. Is this an idea that's taken off? He is a remarkable person, but hasthis idea been replicated? Well, that's good to know. I'll say more.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
The gentleman in the back, and that'll be three questions, and then we cango to the

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Hi, I'm a 100 graduate and I workcurrently for a non-profit organization in the south side of Williamsburg as adigital justice facilitator. My question is, how big of an impact is theimmigrant population as a part of houselessness? And has there been anythingput in place or any thought put into helping these people who have becomehomeless while actively pursuing citizenship? I know it's a big issue here inNew York because we are a sanctuary state. Many people, because the process takesso long, and I've seen this personally at my job, where people come in, we helpthem apply, but they lose their spot in the shelters because they're constantlybeing rotated in and out.

Mayor Karen Bass:
I gotcha. So, yes, yes, yes. Just anybody question that, just ask themwhere they would be. sleeping on the street scared to death. I don't know howanybody could think otherwise. In terms of NIMBY, let me tell you some goodnews. The problem I think is so massive in LA that I'm not dissuaded by theNIMBY, NIMBYists at all. For example, there's a lot of neighborhoods like thatone executive directive I told you and people protested. So the people in thewealthier areas who did not want their single family blocks changed, theyactively promote housing, but on their commercial strips. That's a realadvance. Because in the past, it was just go over to that other neighborhood.But when you're talking about 40,000 and 70,000 people, people are like, okay,we understand. Just don't completely change our way of life. And by the way, Ifeel the same about the inner city, because the inner city single family homestoo.

And so the commercialcorridors, and then the Sears building, I really believe the problem with thatwas the developer and how they went about it. So if you go to a community,especially a poor community, because that's where that Sears building is, andjust tell them you're gonna set up 10,000 beds, what do you expect they'regonna do? So I think had he gone about it better and included them, and myviewpoint is my organizing values. You work with neighborhoods and come to asolution. In terms of street medicine is what we call it in LA, and we do thatwidely.

We have contracts with both universities, USC and UCLA. WhatI like about them though, because to me the goal is to get you off the street.Not, I mean, yeah, I wanna take care of you while you're on the street, but Iwant you off the street. What I like about our street medicine folks is thatthey follow, when we move the people into the motels, they continue to followthem. I do wanna mention that congregate shelter is what a lot of peoplereject, but the market has produced some better models. So we are gonna have tolook to transitioning out of the motels, because it's just too expensive. Sowe're looking at that now as a more, humane, better way of congregate shelting.When you talked about the immigrant population, I was scared to death that whathappened to you guys was going to happen to us.

So Abbott was sending us buses too, and obviously it wassuch a naked attempt to destabilize Democratic-run cities and to pit ethnicgroups against each other. So first of all, I do not believe the populationsare the same and think it's very important that you deal with migrantsdifferently than you deal with people who are unhoused. And so we arefortunate, of course, we're a sanctuary city and state as well. That's why wewere being punished.

And so we have a very strong network of immigrant rightsorganizations. And so we work with them and empower them to take care of thepopulation. And we recently worked together and got a $21 million grant that Idid not want to come to the city. Now, it's coming to the city because weneeded to be the receiver of the money. But this money is going completely tothe community-based organizations to do what they know to do best. It's coming.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
Since our elected officials will be trying to solve this problem here inour city, I'm going to call on Eric and Gail for their questions, and thenwe'll move to others.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Would you consider running for mayor of New York City? I'm kidding. I'mkidding. And how is your city council with you? How have they been with you toyour right, to your left? Have they been supportive? play politics?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
My question is that we are alsotrying to prevent homelessness, and we, and the city council passed, you canget a voucher if you're about to be evicted, and the mayor rejected that, andso now we're in court on that issue specifically. So question number one, isthat something that you've thought about? The mayor says there aren't enoughpeople able to get housing who have vouchers and who are in the shelter, but wethink that This would be good to make sure people end up not in the shelter.And secondly, on the federal government, since you have such expertise, I haveto speak Monday at the Harvard Club to debate with the former head of SEC forMadam Harris. He's going to represent Mr. Trump. So my question is, what wouldbe your question as to what the federal government should be doing forprevention of homelessness? And wish me luck.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I'm coming to that, Gail.

Mayor Karen Bass:
I think you'll be fine. Want to take a couple more?

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
You want to take some more? OK. Center for Housing, Mr. Hubbard.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I read in two real estate industryreports in the last six months that Biden was going to allocate $250 billionfor housing. that didn't specify what program, but there were three federalprograms that have been basically disbanded, which was public housing, the GIBill, and back in the 70s, Section 8, it was Section 236 then, combined withFHA insurance. There is no production program right now with HUD. And I'mwondering, LaGuardia got all this housing built by going to Washington literallyevery week. And you alluded to this, but could the Conference of Mayorsre-institute that, you know, beseech them to start funding and getting thisproblem solved federally? It's a federal problem.

Mayor Karen Bass:
So let me just well, actually, let me start there. I have not heard of twohundred and fifty billion dollars, but I'm going to go find out because I wantsome of that money. But but the Biden administration has been absolutelyamazing as an apart as a partner in terms of being willing to, one, help usfind money, but to also help us identify policies that needed to be changed. Imentioned one, but there's other policies as well that need to be changed. ButI do know that Vice President Harris has her plan around building, I think it'sfive million units of housing. I actually think it needs to be a lot more.

You mentioned the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Yes, the U.S.Conference of Mayors number one goal is going to be in the next year, which isJanuary is when our annual meeting is. is going to focus on housing and anational strategy around housing. In terms of Section 8 and all the otherthings that you, policy things you mentioned, your former congresswoman willtell you that the Republicans are doing everything they can to end publichousing. So they don't want any of these programs to exist. I wish we could usevouchers in the way that you described in your city. That would be wonderful.We don't have the resources for it, but we would jump at that if that waspossible. In terms of my relations with city council, number one, how manycouncil people do you have? Yeah, we have 15. Our institutions are actuallypretty undemocratic, because a council office in LA is over 250,000. And wehave a county, our supervisors. First of all, in our county, we have 88 cities.Our county population is roughly equal to your city population. We have fivepeople in charge. Five, that's it. There is no city council. We havesupervisors.

So there's actually a ballot measure to change that. It'srelatively undemocratic. I have council members to my right and to my left. Iget along very, very well. Most of them I've known, not all of them. We do havesome young council members who were elected with DSA. I know DSA is prettystrong here. I didn't know it was strong in L.A. actually until they gotelected. And people ask me about that. I just came from D.C., so everythinglooks rosy on my city council, because there's really nobody that's, well, Imean, again, there's no Republicans, but so we work well together.

My whole viewpoint is, you know, we do have the tradition ofthe mayor's office versus the council, but because my basic values are incommunity organizing, to me, I see value in 16. as opposed to one against 15.So I go out of my way if they have a problem, you know, to make sure theirproblem is resolved. And then for our newer council members that are makingthat transition from activist to legislator, I try to spend a lot of time. Imade that transition too, but again, it was much later in life, so it was adifferent transition for me. But so far, so far, so good.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
And Valerie and, The gentleman on the back row and the lady next to him.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Thank you. A couple of questions.Number one, I've had some experience building affordable housing with anot-for-profit that I have. It's not mine. I'm on the board. I was thepresident. And we just put 75 units in Brownsville, Brooklyn for formerlyincarcerated women and their families with supportive housing. And you didn'tmention any piece of supportive being as a part of the housing the unhoused. Sothat's one question. And the second one is, and I'm sure you're not familiarwith this, but we are in the middle here in New York City of evaluating theCity of Yes Housing Opportunity Program. And one of the, I guess my bias willshow right now, it's sort of like the trickle-down theory of housing. You justbuild housing, more housing of any kind, versus really focusing on mandatingaffordability. So I was wondering what you think about those two views. Andwhat do you really think affordable housing is? It's 80%, 50% of AMI. Thatmeans that it's really not affordable for most people who need it. So I waswondering what you think about that.

Hon. Carolyn Maloney:
We had three other questions in the back. Yeah, I'll take them all. Andthat's got to be the end?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Yeah, yeah, are you were saying thatyou were able to place all 21,000 homeless individuals in motels and hotels?And I'm wondering what the impact of that was on on your city budget andwhether you had to make a But they had to compensate for that by making somebudget cuts, or as we experienced here in New York. So if you could talk inmore detail about how you were able to bring 21,000 people, I believe, I assumeboth individuals and families, how you were able to bring them inside.

Sandra:
When I heard the back, I thought itwas more and more back there. But anyway, greetings. My name is Sandra I.Coleman. Thank you both for this dialogue. It is and was amazing. When lifehappens, anyone can become unhoused. True affordable housing exists withinPHAs, public housing authorities, for those that don't know what that means. Myauthored quote is 30% of a tenant's income, no roommate needed. The Fair ClothAct needs to be repealed. Would you both agree or disagree that more publichousing should be built instead of being demolished? And I am a public housingresident, and we are low to moderate income, just in case people don't know.

Ernie Brooks:
Yeah, well, thank you, Sandrea. Myname is Ernie Brooks. I have to say I was Carolyn's Queens person for threeyears, in which I got involved in a lot of these issues, spending a lot of timeat Queensbridge Houses, which is, I guess, the largest public housing remainingin the United States at this point. And it's interesting, because I live in apart of Long Island City, which is rapidly becoming the new Gold Coast. I thinkit's had more construction than any place certainly in the country, maybealmost any place in the world. And it's mostly been luxury housing. And thequestion is, how do you build affordable housing? And part of the scandal isthat there are unlivable apartments in NYSHA that need to have the money torehabilitate them.

But nobody wants to do that. It's not glamorous, and itdoesn't make money for big real estate. So how the only model and today alittle group I'm in which is fighting against a big up zoning which is going tobring more luxury high rises to the waterfront which is not only notsustainable but it doesn't really help the existing housing crisis. So howother than giving tax breaks and allowing higher more floors to luxurydevelopers, do we get a larger amount of truly affordable? And someone wasreferring to the AMI. It's got to be ones that are 30%, which is what the NYSHAguideline is, right? And that's what we need. And so how do you see the bestway to put that financing together?

Mayor Karen Bass:
Oh, now you're out of my wheelhouse in terms of putting the financingtogether. But I'll tell you, yeah, half of that luxury housing is going to goto Angelenos, right? Just like half of our luxury housing is for New Yorkers,people who have multiple homes. But what did you say? Yeah, and let me respondto your question and the lady right here. What I can't answer you about is thefinancing, except for to say that one of the problems in building affordablehousing, right, is when you use public money, When you patch all of thedifferent funding sources together, it winds up being really expensive becauseit takes forever to patch all those together, which is why we're trying to nowlook to the public sector and the piggy bank I really want to go into arepension funds.

And I realize that pension funds, there's laws. that say youhave to have so much of a return. And so I'm wondering, this is what I'mlooking at in our state, because housing is such a crisis, can't we have like acarve-out in pension funds, save for 10 years? Because just in our cityworkers, between police, fire, and city workers, you're talking billions. So Ido want to explore that in the private sector. You also mentioned supportivehousing, and I'm sorry, when I'm talking about housing, I'm talking aboutsupportive housing. And again, my beef with the field is that the supportive isnot defined. And I think it should be defined. I think there should be basicstandards. I think we should be able to evaluate those standards and talk aboutoutcomes because I personally don't believe that permanent housing meansforever.

I mean, there's a percentage of the population that we'regoing to need to take care of forever, but that's a percentage. Why do weassume that everybody that's unhoused is going to need to be housed and pay norent or little rent the rest of their lives? But to me, permanent housingshould be about two years. if you have sufficient services. And within that twoyears, you should be able to determine who needs to be taken care of for therest of their lives, who might need an extra two years, and who can be on theirown. It's got to be a comprehensive approach. In terms of the trickle-downalso, I don't believe that. I mean, we have the same problem in LA. Tons ofluxury housing. And I drive down the street and wonder, who are all thesepeople that can afford this? And I know that there's a percentage of them thatdon't even live in the United States. I mean, these are people that live allaround the world. They buy properties and some of them they don't even go in.They're just, you know, investments. And it makes me crazy.

Now, you probably heard the scandal in L.A. about ourgraffiti tower, that tower that people, it was supposed to be 750 units ofluxury housing. and it was a Chinese developer who ran out of money. So this islike 50 stories tall, and the building is like halfway finished. And sounfortunately, graffiti artists heard about it around the world and startedflying into LA so they could graffiti the tower. They're parachuting off thetowers, by the way, and tightrope walking. So we… We had to seal it off. But whenI came into office, I started. It was like, I want that. You talk about eminentdomain. I went to the US attorney and said, can't we take this? This is anightmare.

Anyway, so I do not believe in trickle down. I don't thinkit ever worked, and I don't think it's going to. And no, 21,000 people are notin motels. I think we have probably about 1,500 people that are in motels. Sothat is a variety of ways that we were housing people. Some of it iscongregate, a smaller amount. Some of it are subsidies. One of the problemsthat we had with vouchers, we had thousands and thousands of unused vouchers.And I'm not talking about, Well, so and we were also returning money to HUD. Sothat's what we did is we've used all of our vouchers that we could. I told youthe one that we have the problems with, which is the veterans vouchers. We alsohave a problem with Section 8. So those were a variety of different strategies.It's like eight different strategies in terms of how we house people. Themotels was the smallest amount.

Harold Holzer:
I hate to close this extraordinary discussion, but I hope you all join mein thanking. Our thanks to Mayor Bass and Eleanor Roosevelt, distinguishedleader Carolyn Maloney. By the way, while this discussion was going on,speaking of great events you're going to host, the Mets have taken a 10 to 2lead over the Dodgers. But that means that LA is going to get the last game. SoI don't know. Win some, lose some. And I'll be there. Yeah. So please, let'scontinue the conversation upstairs over a glass of wine. Thank you.

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