Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is facing backlash after she asked the city's "most fortunate" residents to fund housing for the homeless, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Bass spoke about the latest initiative to tackle LA's growing homeless crisis during her State of the City address on Monday.
"We will not hide people but what we will do is house people," Bass said. "The crisis on our streets is nothing less than a disaster."
While the mayor touted the success of her Inside Safe program — which moved 21,000 homeless people into temporary housing, according to the Associated Press — Bass made it clear that more needed to be done.
Bass claimed that the Inside Safe "strategy" and "system" would eventually end the homeless crisis in LA, but in order to make strides, wealthy residents would need to "speed up" their charitable efforts.
"Right now, we’re working to move past nightly rentals," Bass said on the city increasing efforts to move homeless into temporary housing. "We are asking the most fortunate Angelenos to participate in this effort, with personal, private sector and philanthropic funds – to help us acquire more properties, lower the cost of capital and speed up housing."
“This is the mission of our new capital campaign, LA4LA," Bass explained while noting the homeless crisis continues to negatively impact all residents, local businesses and city resources.
"I will just not accept this and our city can’t afford to accept it," the mayor continued.
While the mayor's latest campaign will depend on "humanity and generosity of the private sector," her plans for tackling the crisis were met with backlash online.
Users on X called Bass a "joke" while slamming "LA4LA" as a waste of money.
"So they blew through 67 million with next to zero impact and now want you to chip in more money so they can blow through that too. After all it’s just money," one user wrote along with a crying laughing emoji.
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Despite backlash over billions being poured into programs across the region already — and seemingly producing very little results — Bass insisted. "LA4LA can be a sea change for Los Angles, an unprecedented partnership to confront this emergency, an example of disrupting the status quo to build a new system to save lives."