Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass this week celebrated the opening of a $72 million homeless housing project in the city. The facility, however, is not new construction — it is a converted Motel 6 containing 111 units.
That math puts the cost at roughly $650,000 per unit. Because a standard motel room runs about 300 square feet, the price works out to more than $2,000 per square foot once converted into housing for homeless residents.
The project is the latest example of Los Angeles’s long-running commitment to the “Housing First” model, a policy approach embraced by Bass, former Mayor Eric Garcetti, and Gov. Gavin Newsom, which prioritizes placing homeless individuals into housing without first requiring sobriety or mental-health treatment. Critics argue the approach has produced billions of dollars in spending with little measurable reduction in the number of people living on the street.
Much of that spending flows to a network of nonprofit organizations that provide homeless services and depend on continued government grants to operate — an arrangement critics describe as a “homeless-industrial complex” with limited incentive to actually end homelessness, since doing so would eliminate their funding source.
Critics of the current approach argue that expanding services and high-cost housing in California, which already draws homeless populations from other states due to its climate, may create additional incentive for people to relocate to or remain in the state rather than seek assistance elsewhere.
Among the alternative policy proposals circulating are stricter enforcement of existing anti-camping laws, mandatory sobriety programs as a condition of occupying city-funded shelters, and expanded screening and treatment options for homeless individuals with mental illness.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman has pledged to cut homelessness in the city in half before the 2028 Olympics. Critics of the current policy framework contend her approach represents an extension of the same strategies that have so far failed to curb the crisis, rather than a departure from them.
