Every time we see one of our neighbors living and dying on the streets, we should be shocked. Instead, in Los Angeles it has become routine. The desensitization to homelessness is a moral failing and a stain on any leadership that would call itself progressive. Angelenos have voted three times in the last decade to tax themselves to respond to our city's most serious problem with housing, services, and care. But City Hall has not done nearly enough with this investment, allowing inhumane suffering to continue in one of the wealthiest cities in the world.
Los Angeles is spending hundreds of millions on homelessness every year, but we have not applied the rigor or accountability that this money demands. 40% of people moved indoors through the Mayor's signature program have returned to the streets. By failing to use our dollars, staffing, and infrastructure as efficiently as possible, we are failing the people we promised to help and squandering the compassion of voters who believed something could change. We must earn back the trust of both. If Los Angeles is going to spend real resources on this crisis — and it should — the problem must be solved.
Invest in what works
The goal
A city utilizing every resource and innovation available to get people into homes they can stay in.
The problem
New York has more people experiencing homelessness than LA, but because New York has been mandated to produce adequate shelter beds for decades, they have very few people on the streets experiencing unsheltered homelessness – just 3-4% of their total homeless population. Los Angeles only has a third of the shelter beds we need. As a result, 27,000 people are sleeping on our city’s streets – 61% of our homeless population – and more homeless people die in Los Angeles than in NYC, despite better weather here.
To make progress on reducing unsheltered homelessness, we need to significantly expand our capacity to shelter and house people. With the potential for less federal and state money coming into LA for homelessness response, we also need to stretch every dollar as far as possible and make sure we are investing only in what works.
City Hall is not doing that right now. Just one example: despite repeated efforts from the City Council to reduce costs in the program, Inside Safe costs an average of $85,000 a year for a motel room and services, and some rooms go as high as $100,000 per year. It is the most expensive temporary housing program in the city by far, and people are staying in the motel rooms for close to a year. For the same amount of money, we could rent three apartments using a short-term rental voucher and provide intensive services – housing more people in a program that has delivered much better outcomes.
Inside Safe is also the only citywide strategy that the Mayor’s Office is coordinating right now. But we desperately need other citywide interventions: we need a real plan to address the over 6,500 people living in cars, vans, and RVs; we need to help the over 1,500 young people aged 18 to 25 who are currently homeless; and we must immediately address the over 7,000 family members – including nearly 4,000 children – sleeping in shelters and on our streets.
We do not need to accept mass unsheltered homelessness. As Mayor, Nithya will look at everything the city invests in, direct our dollars to the programs that will get us the best housing outcomes for the least money, and actively redesign programs that are not working.
Our plan
Reorganize our shelter interventions to quickly shelter and house the largest number of people with the same dollars.
Maintain our capacity for encampment resolution by investing in a smaller number of rooms or units that offer privacy and dignity to people transitioning from the street.
Offer intensive case management services, including connections to mental health and substance use care, that help transition people within 90 days into appropriate long term options: short- and long-term rental vouchers, family reunification, acute care beds, board and care facilities, permanent supportive housing, and more.
Significantly expand our investment in Time Limited Subsidies, a short-term rental voucher program with case management support that has the best outcomes of any temporary housing intervention, and costs significantly less than motel programs.
Useperformance data and active oversight over our investments to improve outcomes at every point of engagement, to ensure that the system is working to move people into safety and ensuring that they have the support to stay housed. Thousands of people are currently staying for more than a year in our most expensive interventions, without getting access to case management and care.
Expand investment in low-cost, innovative, and successful shelter and housing strategies – like shared housing, or low-cost modular housing – so we have many more ways to help low-income Angelenos find and stay in homes.
Audit every stalled homeless housing project and use the power of the mayor’s office to push projects forward.
End the city's haphazard and ineffective approach to vehicular homelessness, bringing clear strategy to respond to the over 6,500 people living in cars, vans and RVs within City limits and better addressing neighborhoods’ calls for support.
Create more safe, temporary housing for families, so we no longer have over 1,000 children sleeping on streets across our city.
Do not leave a single federal, state, or private dollar on the table to address youth homelessness, and use our resources to scale evidence-driven, low-cost models like flexible cash assistance that help transition-age youth avoid homelessness.
Bring immediate treatment to our streets and shelters
The goal
A City Hall committed to the difficult work of ensuring people who are sick are getting the care they desperately need.
The problem
While some unhoused Angelenos are simply priced out of housing, some people experiencing homelessness are also dealing with untreated health conditions, substance use disorders, and mental health challenges. Many people on our streets need immediate support and the government has largely failed to provide it, an outrageous dereliction of responsibility. Angelenos who witness someone in crisis have nowhere to turn. Too often, calls to the police or fire department are met with the same answer: there is nothing we can do. This leaves both the person in crisis and those trying to help alone and frustrated, a failure of basic civic duty that cannot continue.
Currently, only the County of Los Angeles has the funding to provide this kind of care, but the city can do much more to fill in the gaps and to advocate more effectively with the County for those on our streets and shelters who need help. As Mayor, Nithya would put an end to the finger pointing and blame shifting to other levels of government, work with the County to maximize the care they provide within city limits, and step up to fill the gaps by delivering immediate treatment on our streets.
Our plan
Immediately deploy street medicine teams citywide. There are teams that can deliver health and mental health care right on our sidewalks and our streets. These teams will operate proactively, visiting encampments and providing the kind of life-saving treatment that can stabilize individuals and help them move off the streets into safety, and continuing their care in shelters – and can be largely funded through Medi-Cal.
Ensure full, accountable delivery of County services. Measure A, the sales tax that funds the County’s homelessness response, requires coordination between the City and County and mandates data collection on a range of indicators. Based on the limited data we have, only a small fraction of those in shelters and on our streets are getting the care they need. In October 2025, the County’s Department of Mental Health reported that there were just 882 active clients in their program that provides physical and mental healthcare to people in interim housing – just 4% of the over 20,000 people in interim housing across the county. The city must demand data on referrals and care provided at encampments, shelters, and PSH units, and use this data to advocate vigorously for much more.
Establish a citywide system of unarmed crisis response that can respond to mental health and substance use related calls for service quickly. Unarmed crisis response programs and emergency homelessness response programs currently exist in parts of the city, and have proven to be effective – and can take people in crisis off the streets and into sobering centers.
Win the fight for accountability
The goal
A homelessness system with the accountability infrastructure and the expertise to match the scale of the crisis. Where Angelenos have reason to trust that City Hall is spending their money wisely, measuring what matters, and being honest about what's working and what isn't. Where changes are being made every day to ensure the system is working.
The problem
Though spending has significantly increased over the last decade, Los Angeles has never built a real system for homelessness response. Instead City Hall has put together a patchwork of programs, agencies, and dollars that were never required to prove they work together, or work at all. No agency or program has been required to demonstrate results. No department or office has been put in charge of monitoring the spending.
In fact, efforts towards accountability and oversight are ignored or slow-walked. For example, despite the Council establishing a Bureau of Homelessness Oversight a year ago, not a single staff member has yet been hired.
The lack of staffing means the city is simply unprepared for current and impending challenges. Two major challenges are ahead of us. First, the city lacks staff capacity to contract directly with service providers for homeless services, and instead runs all city contracts through the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), a regional body which has been plagued with scandal and may be on the verge of shuttering. Secondly, as federal and state funding has expired or been withheld, our region will have much less money for homelessness response in the next few years -- we must plan for the inevitable funding cliffs ahead, and make every dollar go further.
We simply cannot afford a patchwork that runs on faith. Only the Mayor’s Office has the authority to create this system with the scale and urgency required. Nithya will mandate that the city build a real system, one that runs on data, that is backed by expertise, and delivers better outcomes for every neighborhood.
Our plan
Fully and immediately resource a single point of accountability for homelessness within city government with the staffing and expertise to collect and analyze performance data about and improve operational performance of homeless service providers, track homelessness funding in real-time, oversee all contracts, and ensure contractors are paid on time. Ensure that the city has the expertise to oversee the impending transition away from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA).
In the short-term, immediately mandate that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) hire an expert accounting firm to oversee the city's spending.
Implement performance-based budgeting for every program in the city's homelessness budget.
Publish a real-time public dashboard tracking shelter beds, housing placements, encampments, and spending by program, alongside the homelessness budget and quarterly spending.
Require regular neighborhood-level engagement from city staff on homelessness so that every community has a direct line to the people responsible for results in their area.
Establish regular coordination between all outreach teams and emergency dispatch related to homelessness that ensures that we make steady progress towards reducing unsheltered homelessness. Many different agencies in addition to homeless service providers engage with people on our city’s streets: the Los Angeles Fire Department, the Bureau of Sanitation, unarmed crisis response programs like CIRCLE and UMCR, and LAPD, as well as the County Department of Mental Health and the County Department of Health Services. Coordination would begin as a pilot in one neighborhood and then expand quickly citywide, and would make every part of the government work together towards clear goals, buttressed by regular data collection, similar to the process used in San Francisco.