Los Angeles Mayor Bass admits she fell short on ending street homelessness

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said she fell short of her goal to end street homelessness by 2026.

Bass, who is running for re-election, spoke to CNN at the St. Vincent Behavioral Health Campus, a former hospital now being converted into a site for mental health care, addiction treatment and housing. The city is one of several in California known for visible homelessness.

Anchor Elex Michaelson asked why the city had not met the target she set in a 2023 interview with Jake Tapper. Bass agreed the goal had not been reached.

"Basically when I said that, it was at the beginning of my term," she said. "I am very committed to achieving that goal. I didn't anticipate some of the bureaucratic barriers that I would experience, but I am prepared to take those on now."

She said Los Angeles had long accepted street homelessness while focusing on new construction. Bass said the city had not expected the problem to grow as it did. She added that street homelessness fell for two straight years during her three and a half years in office, the first such decline on record.

"So this is a problem that all Angelenos experience, and we have got to have a commitment that this has to end," Bass said. "The city and the county never made that commitment before, and I found something that surprised me. I found a lot of people who work internally in the system who were very resistant to ending street homelessness."

Michaelson noted that homelessness had dropped only 17.6 percent. Bass said the recent decline marked the first time the city had made any progress and credited her leadership for the change.

"We need to end the failed policies of the past, which is, 'All we're going to do is focus on building, and we are going to ignore street homelessness,'" she said. "That is what the city and the county has done for years."