Exclusive | LAs homeless grift machine in two pictures Mayor Bass hails new build as $16M site faces wrecking ball

Mayor Karen Bass broke ground on a new tiny home village for the homeless on Thursday — just weeks after the city announced plans to tear down a 74-bed development they’ve already spent $16 million on.On Thursday, the mayor’s office blasted an email with glossy photos of Bass breaking ground alongside fellow DSA Councilmember, Hugo Soto-Martinez.The announcement praised a new 50-bed East Hollywood tiny home village, a project expected to cost taxpayers about $33 million by the time it is completed.But across the city in Tarzana, officials are preparing to tear down a different tiny home village with 74 beds after taxpayers already poured roughly $16 million into building and operating the site.It is one of several temporary homeless housing sites now slated for shutdown across Los Angeles.The City Council’s Homelessness and Housing Committee, chaired by socialist mayoral hopeful Nithya Raman, voted in late April to spend another $1.7 million tearing the property down.Independent candidate for mayor Spencer Pratt blasted the spending and the decision to demolish the site.“It’s very obvious that for Nithya Raman and Karen Bass, the homeless problem is just a grift machine for them waste taxpayer dollars,” Pratt said.”The mayors entire MO is chasing good money after bad.She keeps pouring resources into the same failed ideas that never work, so the only conclusion you can draw is that somebody is making money off of all this waste.”Raman did not return calls seeking comment despite homelessness being one of the hot-bed issues of the election.

The 74-cabin village was built in 2021 during Los Angeles’ massive COVID-era homeless housing surge, when city leaders promised the projects would move people off the streets quickly and stabilize neighborhoods.Now, just five years later, the city is dismantling the site entirely, adding yet another multimillion-dollar price tag to a homelessness system facing growing scrutiny over runaway spending, poor outco...