After Declaring a "Emergency on Homelessness" on Day 1, Here is a List of Ideas that Mayor-Elect Bass and Her Team Could Focus on Starting on Day 2, 3,4, 5...
Big Picture
From her campaign launch to her victory remarks at the Ebell Theatre, Los Angeles Mayor-Elect Karen Bass has vowed that on "Day One" she will declare “a state of emergency on homelessness.” But very little was said during the campaign, or during the short transition which has followed, about what exactly Bass would do on "Day 2 and beyond."
She will have her work cut out for her. But if she is at once tough-minded and big-hearted, by the time the Olympics come to Los Angeles in 2028, she could be as transformative as Tom Bradley, the mayor who led Los Angeles the last time that the Olympics were in the City of Angels.
The best place for her to start is focusing on initiatives that will give Angelenos a better return on the investment they have made in the city of Los Angeles. What that return looks like is a better quality of life for all Angelenos, through better paying jobs, more affordable housing, better educational opportunities, more transit options, safer streets, more open space, etc.
Below are some ideas to spark the changes this city needs more than ever:
Appoint a Business Minded Deputy Mayor for Economic Development who will attract the talent needed to develop a city-wide economic development strategy that presents a collective vision for the future of L.A. across a variety of topics including, equitable economic and jobs growth, infrastructure, land use, employment, workforce development, and resilience.
Convene a Diverse Business Advisory Cabinet to develop a forum in which business leaders will have a consistent seat at the table to offer meaningful and substantive input to help the city attract private sector investment, corporate headquarters, skilled talent, and an integration into the global economy; all things that have historically helped improve a city’s living standards.
Center the Fight to End Homeless by centralize planning, accountability and advocacy between the city and county, in partnership with the region’s NGOs, through a new "Center" type structure. At the same time advance predictable land use policies that drive down the costs of affordable construction, while limiting public subsidies and build capacity for mental health services and housing based on the need.
Crack down on open air drug markets. In August, the Los Angeles City Council voted to prohibit homeless people from setting up tents within 500 feet of schools and day-care centers. We understand the frustrations of Angelenos who support these policies. But ultimately cracking down on encampments in this way is a short-term solution. Shifting a problem is not the same thing as solving it. For people who have simply fallen on hard times, the city needs to move swiftly to get them into housing. As part of her declaration of emergency, Mayor-Elect Bass promised to identity “very specific areas where we will get people housed.” For the thousands of people on the streets who are currently drug addicted, we need to cite them, bring them into custody, dry them out, and conditionally release them into locked drug rehab centers. We wish this weren’t the case, but the truth is that many people will not choose drug rehabilitation until they see it as a better path than staying in jail. The Mayor-Elect is correct when she points out that at present non-violent offenders are simply booked and immediately released back out onto the street. To fix this problem the new administration should lead a county-wide ballot measure to build an additional, large-scale LA County jail. Once people get the tough love and the rehab they need, we are confident that folks can once again hold down jobs and become responsible members of our community. (Fentanyl deaths in L.A. County soared 1,280% between 2016 and 2021 (LA County Department of Health) Across the country, roughly 70,000 people die annually from overdoses linked to synthetic opioids, a number that has more than doubled in three years, according to federal figures.)
Appoint the City’s First-Ever Real Estate CEO to manage the city’s approximately 9,000 parcels. This person should then develop a plan to marshall 300 acres of public land (city, county, LAUSD, etc.) to stimulate interest in the creation of ten 1,000 unit development opportunities. This should include the development of a scalable housing model, a commitment to an equitable process and outcomes, and a new infrastructure fund. Money is available to help incorporate technology into this strategy - Council File No(s). 20-0753 - which is sitting dormant. This action would be a great first step to building a real city-wide strategy lead by a centralized leadership and management style over the City’s construction, sales, leases, development, joint ventures, etc. of city-owned facilities. Its assets -- such as outdated buildings, undeveloped land, brownfield spaces, and air rights -- could generate value and a revenue stream to fund government budgets, lower taxes, or pay for vital infrastructure.
Role Out a Package of Strategic Procurement Actions to Support LA’s Small Businesses. The City spends, on average, 4.5 billion annually on Procurement which is only second to employee salaries. Many key policy objectives are completed through contractors, from services provided to the unhoused to local business development. Procurement is essential to every policy project. Currently, 76% of City contractors are CA-based businesses, but, in comparison, less than 50% are LA-based businesses. The City’s Office of Procurement can do more to support small business access to capital or gap funding programs, unbundle large contracts into more manageable small contracts for the City’s smaller businesses, and centralize procurement activities to simplify the procurement process and help pay vendors on time.
Put a Plan in Action to Build More Workforce Housing. The city is required to support the development of 486,379 housing units by 2029 and 40% of those units must accommodate low-income residents. The problem is this equation overlooks LA’s middle-class who are priced out of market-rate units and who don’t qualify for affordable housing programs. Bass should create a new density bonus program specific to workforce housing. This would make it possible for developers to get around restrictive height limits and setback requirements. In exchange, the community would get more workforce housing that are large enough to accommodate middle-class families with children.
Replicate San Diego’s Housing Success for LA. In San Diego 100% of the emergency housing vouchers have been issued since June 2021 have placed people into permanent homes. LA can learn from two keys to San Diego’s success on emergency housing vouchers: (1) minimizing the number of agencies that an individual as to deal with and (2) calculating the value of vouchers on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, rather than a flat rate across the city. LA should also loosen zoning restrictions to encourage housing near jobs sites. This is another area where San Diego has a lot to teach LA.
Appoint a Strike Team to Accelerate the Hiring Process for LADWP. LADPW’s inability to bring the necessary resources to business development in a timely manner is one of the most common complaints heard around town. As is its inability to staff up to the levels needed to support the demands on its services and programs. And the problem is not a lack of pay and benefits. LADWP’s hiring process goes through the city’s civil service system, which is outdated and cumbersome. In the absence of reform efforts, a strike team could better prioritize the hiring process for LA’s most critical projects. The LA City Council voted last year to have the Department of Water and Power transition to 100% renewable energy by 2035, as well as develop a long-term hiring plan for nearly 10,000 “green” jobs. This investment of tens of billions of dollars is critical to the region reliance on its water and power system.
Greatly Improve the City’s Business Processes to Accelerate Development. The private sector has said for years that their interactions with the city’s planning, building and safety, LA fire, BoE and LADWP are opaque and time consuming. We encourage you and your team to build on Mayor Garcetti’s Executive Directive 13 to redesign city processes further develop a more coordinating system.
Foster the Flow of Capital to LA’s Small Businesses. The streamlining of city regulations to encourage and assist business growth and development is critical to LA’s future. The Mayor should be a leading voice calling for a better organized and coordinated effort to bring together the myriad and mismatched public and nonprofit organizations that provide support (capital, tech, marketing, legal, etc.) to businesses. As of now, L.A. has a myriad of organizations that provide support to small businesses: banks that provide a variety of community development loan products and deposit services; and 33 Community Development Financial Institutions, 17 include loan funds; L.A. Regional Small Business Development Center Network, nonprofits that deliver financial education and counseling to low- and moderate-income people, to name a few.
Seek Out More P3s. Be bold on public realm improvements, specifically leveraging P3’s to execute transformational park projects and public programming. LAWA used a P3 model at LAX for the People Mover and the Consolidated Rental Car Facility. Lots of good examples in other cities that we could do but haven’t done in LA, outside of LAX. Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, many parks in NYC like Bryant Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park, and Millennium Park in Chicago are all excellent, among many others. Currently, virtually all capital investment and programming comes from public sources and is managed by the Recreation and Parks Dept., which doesn’t have the fundraising or programming capacity that could be achieved with more private-public collaboration.
Appoint a “Smart City Committee” with the goal of the group is to develop a Catalyst Fund that brings together L.A. government agencies (ITA, Public Works, LADOT, Procurement), private firms, and community stakeholders to develop and deploy innovative Smart City technologies, data collection and management tools to address public sector’s goals around equity, mobility, affordability, sustainability, community health and safety, and workforce development. Initiatives will generate social, environmental, and financial returns on investment that will be reinvested to support Smart City infrastructure.
Create More By-Right Zoning and Density around Transit Hubs. The development of housing should not be a protracted negotiation with an individual Councilmember and numerous community groups. Updating the community plans throughout the city would help solve this challenge. (Theoretically, as Community Plans and General Plans are updated, there will be reduced need for General Plan Amendments and Zone Changes, which are the entitlement requests that trigger JJJ.)
Expand the City’s Adaptive Reuse Ordinance. The success of ARO in DTLA, Hollywood and Koreatown, provide the roadmap to turn LA’s growing list of underutilized strip malls into innovative mixed-use developments, that will bolster housing production and our economy, business community and tax base. Think tank Rand Corp. identified in a March study 2,300 underutilized office and hotel properties in Los Angeles County that could be converted to housing. Most of them are older office buildings with big chunks of unrented space. If all the underused buildings were converted to housing it would add as many as 113,000 units. Citywide adaptive reuse discussion have been quiet as of late and are expected to be addressed via Community Plan updates and unfortunately DTLA 2040 is hung up because of Council situation. Let’s move forward in 2023 and also look to AB 2011 which could be useful for unlocking more adaptive reuse.
Increase or Eliminate Site Plan Review Thresholds. SPR is strictly a city-imposed requirement; and the current 50-unit threshold is arbitrary; having been established decades ago because of lawsuit that no longer reflects the City’s vision of sustainable growth. This change, when linked to affordable housing measures, has the potential to drive down housing costs, while increasing the development of a more diverse housing stock. At this time site plan review is only being talked about for 100% affordable. Otherwise, it is being addressed in the context of Community Plans (for example, the proposed DTLA 2040 plan would increase review threshold to 500 units for projects that use the new Community Benefits System; in Hollywood, proposed threshold is 250 units).
Create a LA Housing Finance Agency. LAHFA would be an independent, self-sustaining agency that would complement the activities of HCIDLA, by providing new financing tools for the creation of affordable housing and amplifying the use of funds devoted to that goal by a factor of 12.5.
Advocate for Streamlining Reviews. Work to pass state legislation that would grant an exemption of long-range planning documents (such as the housing element of local general plans and community plans) from environmental review and to exempt general plan changes that must align with the housing element update. These changes will protect these plan amendments from being subject to CEQA and related litigation, making it easier to create a more transformative approach to the Housing Element. Follow-on with additional CEQA streamlining measures.
Expand Broadband. Lead the City’s efforts to improve broadband connectivity to residents and businesses throughout LA’s underserved neighborhoods. The city’s existing infrastructure — streetlights, poles, buildings, property, fiber, and other public assets — should be made available to specific vendors at their cost! Cities with a higher fraction of residents that have broadband access tend to have stronger and more equitable labor market participation and outcomes.
Promote Re Shoring to LA. Lead the shift of offshore production of materials/equipment/supplies to the City/County of Los Angeles by leveraging the advantages of 1) access to the largest concentration of manufacturers in the nation to build a high performing supply chain, 2) skilled talent to staff a new facility, 3) training incentives (Employment Training Panel) to train new suppliers or employees at a new facility, 4) one of the largest consumer markets, 5) dependable transportation infrastructure, 6) local assistance programs to help with site selection for a new facility and 7) extensive supplier scouting resources available to assist with the identification of local manufacturers to replace foreign suppliers.
Lobby the Federal, State and County governments for more resources toward health, education, human services, community development and other social and economic sectors. This should be coupled with a pursuit of police reforms that respect constitutional rights, redresses past injustices, and maintains the safety gains of the 1990s and early aughts. And support opportunities to direct more resources to strengthen services such as public health, housing, workforce development and programs like Community Safety Partnership Program (CSP). These programs are a powerful tool to addressing root causes of crime. (In the United States the average spends on healthcare per capita is $12,500 and basically a few twenty dollar bills on public health.)
Enhance Workforce Development Guidance to the Unemployed. Support the development of better metrics to track outcomes of the City’s workforce development dollars and track wage gains, the percentage of trainees employed, employer satisfaction, and the cost per trainee. The variety of governmental entities that possess workforce development funding list the programs they offer, but it’s unclear if outcomes are consistently tracked and if the funding mix changes based upon them. Additionally, redirect WD dollars that have weak outcomes to develop initiatives such as direct funding to support training programs hosted within LA’s growth industries – healthcare, tech, life sciences, new space, aerospace, entertainment, etc. Our educational institutions are prepared to work on such initiatives. The LA Coalition has played a leadership role in creating innovative solutions including partnerships with LA Trade Tech and Clean Tech Incubator and Cal State Dominguez Hills and LAUSD.
Expand the Number of Exempt Positions: The City Charter specifies that up to 150 positions for management, scientific, professional, or expert positions will be made available citywide. The City is only utilizing about 50 of these positions and not in the most effective manner and should hire more skilled talent from the private sector. This number should be expanding significantly.
Public Works. The Board of Public Works must be more assertive in breaking down silos between the Public Works Bureaus, especially identifying inter-bureau, intra-bureau, and intra-department communication and coordination. Without action the impact of this disfunction and inefficiency continues to have consequences within our communities.
Create a New Career Executive Assignments (CEA) Level. The City should create CEA positions (federal and CA state government does it) in the top managerial levels of civil service to support broad responsibility for policy implementation and extensive participation in policy development.
Better Budgeting. The City of Los Angeles could dramatically reduce the health insurance spending it makes on behalf of retirees ($398 million per year) by adopting reforms that take full advantage of health insurance subsidies provided by the federal government.
Evaluate LACERS Pension Fund Investments. Research shows that the LACERS pension fund allocates billions of dollars to private equity firms for investment and 90% of those dollars go to equity firms outside L.A. and into funds with limited or no investments in businesses run by women and minorities. Let’s find better ways to reinvest in our city!
Create a Public Wealth Fund. This independent and professional holding company would oversee the City’s public commercial assets. This can be accomplished through an independent balance sheet that encourages active long-term governance aimed at greater societal and financial value. Without running a proper analysis of the 2015 Los Angeles County Tax Roll , a rough estimate of the real estate owned by the public sector inside the jurisdiction of the City of L.A. is worth potentially a quarter of the total real estate market value or some $159 billion and cover 71,045 acres (288 km2). This would represent some 57 percent of L.A.’s GDP.•
Create a Flat Business Tax. The one now is cumbersome and overburdens few while exempting many. Creating a flat tax will maximize clarity, compliance and increase city revenues. (legislative fix)
Support the City’s ability to provide more incentives to businesses owned by people of color, veterans or women when awarding city contracts. This can be done by allowing people of color, veterans or women to be preferred for City contracts and business by amending the City Charter (371a and Sec. 372) to specify what types of preferences they are able to provide as a City. The estimated cost is 15 Million dollars for Charter amendments to be on ballot and City Council needs to approve entire amendment language to place for the ballot.
Have the City better enforce the current Local Bid Preference policy.
Support the Mayor’s Fund for LA. Public/taxpayer dollars have limitations and private resources must always be considered a tool to drive innovation, build efficiencies, spark change. The Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles has proven a critical tool in providing a bridge of private resources to government and allow for a better and more effective in serving all Angelenos. The Coalition has a proven track record of driving innovation with government namely through its deep engagement with the launch and implementation of an Operations Innovation Team in partnership with the Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles. MFLA should continue to provide the bridge to directly engage with government to leverage innovation and efficiencies that make City government stronger.
Create a More Responsive City Workforce & City Hall to That Encourages Innovation: City Hall houses a labyrinth of hallways, elevators, and stairs, that convey that one is not welcome and the bureaucracy is unbearable. No where is this more evident than in City Hall’s 27-story tower that houses thousands of government employees who remain further out of reach from the public they serve as the floors go higher. Relocate a number of city staff members from the tower to more publicly accessible city-owned sites, where appropriate. In turn make tower office space available for public/private initiatives that bring together more non-profits and tech incubators linked to addressing the needs of the public sector, including developing a skilled - workforce and enterprise solutions for government.