Are emergency declarations the answer to homelessness?
- Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland have declared emergencies
- The declaration has produced mixed results in Los Angeles
- Advocates say access to affordable housing is the real emergency
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LOS ANGELES (NewsNation) — The current situation in Denver mirrors what happened in Los Angeles last year when Mayor Karen Bass took office and declared homelessness a city emergency on her first day.
Denver has an unhoused population of less than 7,000 — a figure far smaller than other major U.S. cities. For the Mile High City, however, it’s been a 45% jump in the past five years. And just like Bass, new Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has declared it an emergency.
“We will set a goal, which is we want to get 1,000 people, who are currently unhoused, access to housing before the end of this calendar year,” declared Johnston.
As is the case in other cities, critics claim that Denver should focus on the bigger problem of affordable housing in general as a means of getting ahead of the problem.
“In the long run, the amount of money you spend putting people in tiny homes, running them through the programs, (the city) could be spending master leasing these apartments,” said Denver resident Ana Glom.
Master lease agreements are ones that move forward without involving a bank or private lender, a practice that advocates believe reduces the risk of people losing their homes in the first place.
The affordable housing component is not lost on Bass, who fears that the forces fueling the fight may eventually outweigh the fixes in motion.
“Frankly, with all that we’re doing now, I’m worried that next year the count might be even larger because we do not have a way of preventing homelessness,” Bass said.
The emergency declaration in Los Angeles has, so far, housed about 1,400 people at a cost of about $40 million for the program’s cost.
“(A) state of emergency declaration is, sad to say, a cry for help,” said Bob Hayes, the founder of the National Coalition for the Homeless. “It’s a cry to say something important is happening.”
Nevertheless, emergency declarations are also in place in other cities, including Portland and Seattle, where unhoused populations have remained high.
The Los Angeles City Council recently approved another $260 million dollars for the mayor’s homelessness program.
