The city of Los Angeles has not received millions of dollars in federal aid it may be owed for housing homeless people in hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic because, nearly a year into the crisis, Mayor Eric Garcetti’s administration hasn’t asked for the money yet.
Local, state and federal officials say the city hasn’t requested reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for portions of the estimated $59 million it has spent on Project Roomkey, which has been sheltering homeless people in hotel rooms since shortly after the pandemic began last year. The city has sharply scaled back the hotel program in recent months, leading advocates and lawyers for the homeless to say the Garcetti administration is showing a lack of political will to protect some of L.A. s most vulnerable residents.
The financial crisis at Los Angeles City Hall has become so serious that city officials have begun looking at the possibility of pushing the payment of certain bills into the next fiscal year, according to a report issued Friday.
City Administrative Officer Rich Llewellyn, the city’s top budget official, said his office has asked each city department to prepare a list of contracts with payments due in the last three months of the fiscal year, which ends June 30, to determine which ones could be deferred until after July 1.
“Further, if a department believes that they cannot defer all or part of the payment, we asked them to justify the need to make the payment at this time,” he wrote in his 47-page financial report.
L.A.'s budget shortfall grew to $750 million after Mayor Eric Garcetti and the council failed to obtain sufficient short-term financial concessions from city unions.
Los Angeles officials are reeling from a financial crisis that has struck nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic – prompting city administrators to find creative means to balance their budget.
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Six months ago, following massive protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nury Martinez announced a dramatic step at City Hall: She and her colleagues would cut police spending by $150 million.
The plan, Martinez said at the time, would be to reinvest funding for vital services, including those that “uplift disenfranchised communities.”
On Wednesday, the council took its first stab at deciding where a chunk of that money nearly $88.8 million should go. So far, council members are looking to put much of the money toward nuts-and-bolts city services: street resurfacing, graffiti removal, alley cleanups and many other core city programs.