“The bottom line is people will not be allowed to live on the streets,” Karen Bass forcefully declared as she campaigned for mayor of Los Angeles in 2022. Once in office, Bass quickly made good on this threat, implementing her “Inside Safe” program, designed, according to the LA Times, to “aggressively target large encampments that have been a constant source of frustration for [housed] residents.”

Despite its progressive-sounding name, the program’s priority was to “sweep” homeless encampments — that is, erase unhoused people from the urban landscape for the benefit of better-off residents, typically loud, organized homeowners. Finding stable housing for homeless people has been a secondary concern. The second Inside Safe operation, occurring in the wealthy neighborhood of Venice in the first weeks of 2023, was organized with the hyperconservative, landlord-backed councilmember for the area, Traci Park. Speaking to a small crowd of well-dressed constituents, after briefly waxing about the importance of placing people into housing, Bass proclaimed, “But what is most important is that the community of Venice can reclaim those streets!”

As of June 2024, Inside Safe has moved more than 2,700 people into an indoor shelter of some sort. However, only 506 individuals have found more conventional housing through the program, over half of whom are renting with “time-limited subsidies.” This is a dismal result in a city where forthy-five thousand people are homeless on any given night.