Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass this week celebrated the opening of a $72 million homeless housing project that turned out to be a converted Motel 6 with 111 units — a cost of roughly $650,000 per unit.
Accounting for the size of a typical motel room, about 300 square feet, the project works out to more than $2,000 per square foot, a figure critics say exposes the scale of waste built into California’s homelessness response.
The project is the latest example of the “Housing First” approach championed by Bass, her predecessor Eric Garcetti, and Gov. Gavin Newsom statewide, which holds that the primary barrier facing homeless people is the lack of a physical roof and four walls. That approach has consumed billions of taxpayer dollars across California in recent years while the state’s homeless population has remained stubbornly large.
Opponents of the policy argue that pouring money into homeless services has created an industry of nonprofit organizations dependent on government grants to survive — one with little incentive to actually end homelessness, since doing so would eliminate the need for their own funding.
There is also a migration concern. California’s warm climate already draws homeless individuals from other states, and critics warn that lavish, high-cost shelter options give people from elsewhere even more reason to relocate to the state and remain there rather than seek help closer to home.
Alternatives proposed by critics of the current approach include stricter enforcement of existing bans on street camping, mandatory sobriety programs as a condition of occupying city-run shelters, formal screening to identify homeless individuals with mental illness and connect them to treatment, and a broader policy signal that Los Angeles will not serve as a destination for homeless populations relocated from other jurisdictions.
City Councilmember Nithya Raman has pledged to cut homelessness in half before the 2028 Olympics come to Los Angeles. Critics of the current strategy contend her plan amounts to an expanded version of the same Housing First model that produced the $650,000-per-unit motel conversion.
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