Business leaders met with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass this week during the Leaders Forum hosted by Valley Industry & Commerce Association (VICA) at the Hilton Hotel in Universal Studios, where she covered homelessness, business development and preparations for the upcoming World Cup Games, Super Bowl and Olympics.
She told VICA on Tuesday, Nov. 19 that tackling homelessness remains her top priority. Bass emphasized that “people are dying on our streets … no one should be on the street.”
She planned to keep working on reducing street homelessness and improving transitional housing availability. She also emphasized addressing systemic barriers and encouraging civic participation in housing solutions, such as hosting those individuals who have housing vouchers.
For the first time in many years, Bass added, “Homelessness is down … street homelessness is down.”
She also emphasized the changing demographics of the unhoused, adding that “the fastest growing sector of unhoused population are seniors in early 60s and 70s. … You won’t see those people on the street because they’re hiding (and are) overwhelmingly women.”
“We have dispelled the myth that people don’t want to leave your streets,” Bass said. “We don’t have a problem getting people off the street. Our problem is having enough low-income housing.”
Bass said her office was working to remove bureaucratic barriers to build veterans’ housing. She declared, “There is no reason for us not to eliminate veterans’ homelessness within a year.”
She also discussed her approach to selecting Jim McDonnell, the new chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, highlighting the importance of choosing leaders who can function effectively on national and international stages.
Bass said, “We need a leader who could transform the department internally, strengthen community positions, and address crime.”
She also spoke about her time in Washington D.C. as a member of Congress, and how that time has shaped her view of her role as a mayor, and how those relationships helped her address local challenges.
“One of the things that I have found people in our city don’t think about a lot, and that’s national security. So one of my whole areas of focus when I was in D.C. was foreign affairs, and given that we will be on the world stage, national security was very important to me.”
She added that people think about physical attacks when they think about security but a factor that people don’t think about is “cyber attacks, and of foreign actors invading our infrastructure, which they have done a lot. They’ve been focusing on smaller cities, but that level of consciousness is not here, and so I feel bringing that has been helpful.”
Bass emphasized the importance of making Los Angeles City Hall more business-friendly, adding that it’s often “viewed, at best, not to care about business.”
One of the opportunities that businesses can potentially explore, she added, is preparing business seminars and summits for businesses “to get ready for the opportunities they will present with LA28, so that we know those opportunities when they come.”
To prepare for the upcoming events, she said, the city will host business seminar summits to prepare for opportunities involving the World Cup, the Super Bowl and the Olympics.
VICA President Stuart Waldman said Los Angeles was “built to handle world-class events.”
“There are some concerns with why people are coming here and why they are not coming here, but those can be addressed,” Waldman said.
Bass also spoke about the importance of bipartisan collaboration after President Donald Trump secured a second term in the White House.
“I really think our future is bright. … We have to figure out how we work with whoever is there, which doesn’t mean if they do things that we’re going to go along with it. But we can’t have a posture of opposition if we don’t even know what we’re proposing just yet,” she said.