During an interview aired on Friday’s broadcast of “The Issue Is,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass discussed homelessness in the city and said that she opposes creating a department for the issue because “once you get a department in place, that department is going to continue to live and is not going to want to go out of existence.”
Bass stated, “[O]ne of the challenges I have, it’s not just the protesters who say that people should stay on the street until they get a house, but it’s also the system that wants to continue the bureaucracy.”
Host Elex Michaelson then stated, “Well, that’s what they call the homeless-industrial complex. This idea that these nonprofits and other organizations…and governmental organizations that make money by keeping people on the streets and that there’s this feeling that the process — all these people are making money while all these people suffer.”
Bass responded, “Yeah. And I don’t really agree with that, because nobody’s getting rich off of this. That was one reason why I did not support the idea of starting a department for homelessness that the county has done. And there is some interest in doing that on the city level, but I don’t support that. Because once you get a department in place, that department is going to continue to live and is not going to want to go out of existence. What we’re doing instead, at the city level, is starting a bureau within the Department of Housing for homelessness.”
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