Mayor Karen Bass broke ground on a new tiny home village Thursday — just weeks after the city announced plans to tear down a site they’ve already spent $16 million on.
On Thursday, the mayor’s office blasted an email with glossy photos of Bass breaking ground alongside fellow DSA Councilmember, Hugo Soto-Martinez.
The announcement praised a new 50-bed East Hollywood tiny home village, a project expected to cost taxpayers about $33 million by the time it is completed.
But across the city in Tarzana, officials are preparing to tear down a different tiny home village with 74 beds after taxpayers already poured roughly $16 million into building and operating the site.
It is one of several temporary homeless housing sites now slated for shutdown across Los Angeles.
The City Council’s Homelessness and Housing Committee, chaired by socialist mayoral hopeful Nithya Raman, voted in late April to spend another $1.7 million tearing the property down.
Independent candidate for mayor Spencer Pratt blasted the spending and the decision to demolish the site.
“It’s very obvious that for Nithya Raman and Karen Bass, the homeless problem is just a grift machine for them waste taxpayer dollars,” Pratt said.
”The mayors entire MO is chasing good money after bad. She keeps pouring resources into the same failed ideas that never work, so the only conclusion you can draw is that somebody is making money off of all this waste.”
Raman did not return calls seeking comment despite homelessness being one of the hot-bed issues of the election.
The 74-cabin village was built in 2021 during Los Angeles’ massive COVID-era homeless housing surge, when city leaders promised the projects would move people off the streets quickly and stabilize neighborhoods.
Now, just five years later, the city is dismantling the site entirely, adding yet another multimillion-dollar price tag to a homelessness system facing growing scrutiny over runaway spending, poor outcomes and whether the city’s temporary housing strategy can survive long term.
The California Post has previously revealed Los Angeles is housing homeless people in apartments costing taxpayers up to $1.5 million per room, with $2.6 billion spent since 2020 buying and renovating hotels, motels and dorms.
The properties were bought with $1.3 billion from Gavin Newsom’s Homekey program and another $1.3 billion from the city and county, with some units featuring balconies, laundry and parking, sparking outrage.
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, whose district includes the site, said the site has struggled to be a success because the those housed there have continued to use drugs, commit crimes and properly deal with their mental illness issues.
“It is no secret that this site had its share of issues,” Blumenfield said, saying the facility also lacked ‘strict rules.’
“Over the last few years, I tried to make it a sober site, but due to state and federal rules, this designation would take years at best and cost more to the taxpayers,” Blumenfield said.
The closure is fueling fresh outrage over Los Angeles’ temporary housing strategy, where projects pitched as emergency solutions have consumed huge sums of taxpayer money, while producing limited long-term success.
Elizabeth Mitchell of the LA Alliance for Human Rights, the organization suing the city and county over its handling of homelessness, said the City continues spending heavily on shelters and temporary housing programs without seriously addressing addiction treatment and mental health care.
“They insist on pursuing these outrageously expensive interventions instead of controfting the elephant in the room, Mitchell said.
“What we need is beds that adress the mental health and drug crisis on the street.”
Tarzana isn’t the only location on the chopping block.
City officials are also preparing to close or scale back at least five interim housing programs across Los Angeles, including bridge housing shelters and safe parking lots for people living in vehicles.
The cuts would eliminate 283 beds and save an estimated $6.8 million in annual operating costs.
The city is also weighing whether to shut down nine additional leased sites, many of them hotels or temporary facilities where taxpayers cover both rent and supportive services.
Officials estimate those closures could save another $27 million.
