Nithya Raman

So inside safe motel rooms cost an average of over $80,000 per person or per room per person per year.

And people are staying in them for an average of a year.

And sometimes they're costing as much as $100,000 per person per year.

That is an enormously expensive intervention that I think was appropriate as an emergency intervention but needs to be made into a real fiscally sustainable system that actually can respond to the crisis on our streets with the dollars that we have because this is not sustainable.

And so to me, I want to build that system.

I've actually, in the city, generated data about the performance of our homelessness investments for the first time, working with LASA that shows us where beds are vacant, where our permanent supportive housing units are available.

And through that work, I've actually brought people into these beds, filled every bed, filled every unit.

We need to be building a system which is

costs less per person, but is actually working better at actually bringing people indoors, filling every bed, filling every resource, and then doing the work when they're in those units and those shelter beds to get them the case management they need to transition to whatever is their next step, whether it's reunification with family, whether it is moving into a permanent supportive housing unit, whether it is coming into self-sufficiency, getting a job, being able to actually live independently.

These are all things that the system can do

But you have to design that system.

You need to make sure that there is leadership there and resources to create that system, to make sure that people are moving through it into safety and to permanent housing appropriately.

But that kind of work is not happening right now, despite pushing within the city to create oversight, to create responsibility here.

Well, you know, I have spoken up about the issue in the past.

I called for a ceasefire, introduced a ceasefire resolution in city council.

I've called what's happening there, which is incredibly horrific to witness what's happening in Gaza.

I've called it a genocide.

And

I've been deeply disturbed by what I have seen.

At the same time, in my role as city council member and what I imagine in my role as mayor would be the impacts on people here and kind of the...