COMMENTARY: New Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass' ability to make visible progress on homelessness has implications for Democrats in California and nationally.
Bass is likeable in ways that mask her toughness. Although committed to coalition building, she is also driven and opinionated, a forger of consensus but within a strictly Democratic worldview. She is polite to those who criticize her, but she takes note.“No question that the thing that’s in front of her is homelessness,” said Raphe Sonenshein, executive director the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State Los Angeles and a leading historian of the city.
Will Karen Bass solve this problem? “No,” said Antonia Hernandez, president of the California Community Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that, among other things, is attempting to address homelessness through its grant-making. “She is not going to solve it. Period.” He acknowledged that previous efforts to combat homelessness – the city passed a $1.2 billion bond measure in 2016 to support housing construction – underestimated the need. The challenge now, he said, is for Bass and the council to reverse the rising number of homeless people and encampments and to make enough of an impact for the public to sense it firsthand.
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