2024 LA First Look Retreat — A Conversation with Mayor Karen Bass and Miguel Santana
Fika hosted its 9th annual LA First Look Retreat at the iconic Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in sunny San Marino, CA. The event’s historic setting served as the backdrop to bring together distinguished guests from Los Angeles’ community along with innovators and leaders in tech and investing. The breadth and diversity of First Look has established the event as one of Los Angeles’ premier tech gatherings with attendees flying in from across the country.
The day kicked off with a series of keynote presentations from industry leaders, addressing a variety of noteworthy topics.
Fika’s General Partner, Eva Ho, moderated a timely conversation with LA Mayor Karen Bass and Miguel Santana, President and CEO of the California Community Foundation, about the state of affairs in Los Angeles. The discussion centered on the efforts to address the issues of rising homelessness and housing scarcity. This included the recent launch of LA4LA, a new partnership looking to leverage the resources and financing tools of the private and philanthropic sectors to help the government advance housing faster and at a lower cost as a critical new tool to tackle the homelessness crisis.
Summary
Mayor Bass and Miguel Santana discussed their strategic approach to addressing the city’s homelessness crisis. Mayor Bass expressed her commitment to the issue, stating, “I was in Congress and I was also in the state house, but what made me come back home was the extent of the crisis in Los Angeles… I felt that our city was at a crossroads.” She went on to speak about the thousands more people who have come inside because of the urgent work being done in partnership with LA leaders and the path forward.
Mayor Bass explained that a key part of the strategy is to move people off the streets and into temporary accommodation while permanent housing is being built. “We do have to figure out where we can house people while housing is being built. We have got to end the practice of saying you stay on the street until we build something for you,” she said.
Santana highlighted the necessity for public-private partnerships, like LA4LA, to tackle the issue effectively. He explained that the city needs private-sector investment and thought partnerships to create a sustainable solution: “The issue of homelessness has never really had a place. And so, it has always been dependent on the individual leadership and attention… of individual people as opposed to it being treated systemically.”
Mayor Bass and Santana also discussed the systemic issues that have contributed to LA’s homelessness crisis. Mayor Bass described how previous policy decisions, such as leaving people on the streets until housing was available, had exacerbated the problem. “Because I come from a health background, I think things need to be much more standardized. Because I come also in the past from a university, I think things need to be measured, evaluated, changed. There needs to be metrics and it has to be outcome-based,” she commented.
Santana also pointed out the importance of considering the issue from the perspective of the unhoused to establish a greater sense of urgency to develop, fund and support solutions stating, “When you think about this issue from the perspective of the person who is unhoused, or you think about that person as being your son, your daughter, your brother, then suddenly the expectation is what am I going to do right now to move that person inside?”
One of the key challenges in addressing LA’s homelessness crisis is the city’s lack of affordable housing. To combat this, Mayor Bass and Santana are exploring innovative solutions and approached to problem solving, that involve an all hands on deck and collaborative approach. This includes converting existing market-rate housing into affordable units, speeding up the construction process through executive directives and leveraging private lending strategies and philanthropic investments to pilot new projects that can be scaled.
“We know we need to increase the supply [of housing],” said Mayor Bass. “So that’s a part of what we’re doing as well. So we’re mainly talking about homelessness, but when we’re fast-tracking building, we also are looking at building in general.” Santana expanded on this, explaining how the city is working with developers to turn market-rate units into affordable housing, which can be done much quicker than building new units.
Both Mayor Bass and Santana emphasized the importance of public-private partnerships in making these innovative solutions possible. “We need the private sector to come on board. So LA4LA, [is] a public-private partnership [to unlock affordable housing for all Angelenos] so that we can reach scale. I don’t think there is a way to reach scale with just public money,” remarked Mayor Bass.
