Los Angeles officials touted a dip in unsheltered homelessness in 2024. But activists say the city isn’t doing enough to help those people stay off the streets in the long term.
“I think it's been a failure of the city for a very long time because they deprioritized permanent housing, and what happens with temporary solutions is that people go into a program or into a unit temporarily and then they come back out onto the street,” Susie Shannon told KNX News Craig Fiegener.
The group Housing Is a Human Right staged a demonstration outside City Hall on Tuesday morning, surrounding the building with red tape to protest the bureaucratic hurdles that have held up efforts to build permanent housing.
“It takes so long to get a permit to either create new housing for people who are unhoused, there are problems bringing electricity to those buildings,” Shannon said. “These units are being held up for years and years and years.”
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Shannon said there are “thousands and thousands” of units sitting empty because of permit delays.
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