LA needs to clean up its homeless mess before the Olympics. But City Hall’s plan should alarm everyone

If spending gobs of taxpayers’ money on homelessness — with little to show for it — were an Olympic sport, LA would take the gold.

That reality doesn’t seem to bother the City Council, though.

Last week, it voted to double down on failed approaches as a way of “doing something” about the homeless crisis before the 2028 LA Summer Games.

The council’s plan calls for more of what hasn’t worked: spending exorbitant sums of other people’s money on “services” that entrench the status quo while tucking some homeless people into hotels and other housing — with no requirements for sobriety or treatment.

Even outgoing Mayor Karen Bass (belatedly) called this approach — which at last count brought an increase in homeless people — “naive.”

As LA prepares to host the Olympics in just 20 months, it needs better than naivete on homelessness. 

The city needs vision, change and coordination with the International Olympic Committee. It also needs enduring solutions for Angelenos — and not just a temporary spiff-up for visitors.

Mayor-elect Nithya Raman and the 15-member council would do well to concede the failing status quo and devise a fresh approach that can work.

They’d do well, too, to recognize that the Games provide a rare investment opportunity that can unlock long-term improvement for LA and its residents. 

As the Olympics bear down, what is the city’s actual plan to get the homeless off the streets and into sober, productive lives?

LA needs more than more of the same. City Hall already spends several hundred million dollars a year on homeless services. 

Yet this year’s official count found the number of homeless people in LA had climbed by 3.4% — to nearly 45,200 humans.

It should be obvious that Olympic visitors should not have to dodge tents, waste and needles on their way to watch swimming or gymnastics.

And simply sweeping the homeless from the streets temporarily — as Gavin Newsom and San Francisco officials did in 2023 in advance of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping — is not the answer.

In that case, Newsom and city officials faced withering scorn for clearing the streets not for taxpaying residents, but to impress dignitaries.

As the governor conceded at the time, “I know folks are saying, ‘Oh they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming to town.’ That’s true, because it’s true.” 

Once the fancy leaders left, so did the cops and cleaning crews — and squalor returned within hours.

Will LA follow the same path for the ’28 Olympics? 

Angelenos deserve better. They should get an actual homeless strategy for the Games, not more of the same waste and wishful thinking. 

They should get careful controls on homeless spending, not endless millions shoveled to a homeless industrial complex that enriches service providers while leaving tens of thousands of humans to live in filth.

They should get a safe, clean, vibrant city they can take pride in: not just during the XXXIV Olympiad, but all the time.