Los Angeles City Council member Bob Blumenfield has served the city’s 3rd District in west San Fernando Valley for 10 years. But he’s worked in public service in California for more than a quarter century, including helping residents and businesses recover after the ’94 Northridge earthquake.
On this week’s “In Focus SoCal,” host Tanya McRae speaks with Blumenfield about the steps he’s taking to address homelessness, how the Valley has changed in the last decade, and what he’s trying to accomplish in his last term.
“There have been some very positive changes, in terms of the investments by the city to help uplift the area, of which there have been many. And we’re seeing good things like that. We’ve also had over the last five, six years, we’ve been experiencing a homelessness crisis that has been not just in the district, but in the city and across the country. And one of my goals before I leave office is to get to functional zero on homelessness in the 3rd District.”
Blumenfield describes how the city has changed its strategy on homelessness over the years, and said he’s trying to help address the issue with active solutions, including both interim such as “cabin communities” and tiny home villages, which allow people to get off the streets and stabilized before moving into permanent supportive housing.
“When the streets are the waiting room, people spiral, and spiral themselves, which is a humanitarian crisis. And it ends up being much more expensive and difficult to help somebody who is in a spiral. So you need the interim sites, and you need the permanent supportive sites. And that’s where I’m really leaning into trying to build in the district and throughout the city.”
Blumenfield also discussed public safety issues and his Operation Safe Streets to reduce traffic accidents, street racing and street takeovers.
“In the Valley, we have more traffic deaths than homicides. But speeding and street takeovers speeding, particularly during COVID when the roads were more empty, created a very dangerous situation. And so I put forward what I call the Safe Streets initiative, which included both investing in physical changes to roads like street humps, and street bumps and street tables, that would slow traffic down, but also in overtime for police to make to do a speed task force to do arrests.”
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