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Los Angeles residents who dial 911 for non-violent homelessness issues will have their calls from law enforcement diverted to trained and unarmed professionals in a pilot program announced on Tuesday.
The new initiative is being tested in Hollywood and Venice, where teams including outreach workers and mental health clinicians have been deployed part-time to neighborhoods with a concentration of homeless people and a high volume of service calls. .
Starting next month, teams will be available 24 hours a day to answer non-emergency calls from the 911 system and the non-urgent police number.
“Teams will continue to build relationships with the homeless community, perform light sanitation work, defuse situations as they arise and create referrals to local service providers,” said said a statement announcing the program for Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office.
The crisis and incident response program through community engagement is part of Garcetti’s sprawling plan to tackle an out-of-control homelessness problem. The mayor has offered to spend nearly a billion dollars in the coming year to get people off the streets, build housing and clean up squalid settlements that have spread to almost every part of the city.
City council chairman Nury Martinez said on Tuesday the new program would take the burden off police from dealing with non-violent situations where a clinician might be better suited.
“You can’t have a clearer example of this country without a strong social safety net than when armed people show up to respond to a non-violent mental health crisis,” Martinez said.
Los Angeles will lead the program with Urban Alchemy, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that facilitates the city’s portable showers and toilets and several of its temporary housing for homeless residents.
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