Why Los Angeles Can't Build Homes For The Homeless?

Should we build homes for homeless people? Angelenos think so. In fact, three out of four voters in Los Angeles voted yes to pass Measure HHH, raising $1.2 billion for housing the homeless. Measure HHH was approved in 2016 when Los Angeles had 26,000 homeless people. The plan was to build 10,000 units in 10 years, housing at least 20,000 people, meaning over 77% of the homeless would have a place to stay. Sounds good, right? But that's not what happened. In 2022, the homeless population was estimated at over 47,000 people. Not only the number of homeless people didn't decrease, but there was an 81% increase since 2016. Measure HHH has only provided 1,142 units as of now, and each unit houses two people, which means only around 2,300 of the 47,000 homeless people got a place to stay. That's only about 5% of the total homeless population, while Los Angeles promised to house 77%. You may wonder, what went wrong here? One of the major reasons is cost. The city estimated that one studio unit could cost about $120,000 at the beginning of the project, but the reality was way off. According to a recent report from a city controller, the average cost of one unit went up to almost $600,000, with the highest costs reaching $837,000. In his report, the city controller said, if nothing changes, the cost could soon reach $900,000 or even $1 million per unit. You may wonder, why it costs so much? A lot of the budget went to soft costs, which includes fees, consultants, and financing. Imagine you have 10 homeless people in your community, and you and your neighbors decided to build eight apartments for the homeless. Then you tried building them, and since you didn't know much about construction, you ended up spending all your funds on two apartments. And meanwhile, 10 more people became homeless. You and your neighbors might think this doesn't work, and you may try to rent more units or find other ways to house the homeless, instead of building it yourselves. But California is doubling down. In July 2021, the state announced a plan to spend $5.8 billion to build 42,000 more units. Given the current outcome of the project, do you think building more units will work, or should California change its approach towards the homeless problem? Let us know what you think in the comments. I'm Siamak Korami. Thank you.