Mayors from 21 cities came to Los Angeles earlier this month to reconsider their homeless response at a meeting convened by the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM). “We have got to have the perspective that it’s unacceptable for people not to be provided with basic housing, health care, education and food,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, chair of USCM’s Homelessness Task Force, at an afternoon press conference.

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At the press conference, Wade Kapszukiewicz, mayor of Toledo, Ohio, spoke of the “three kinds of people” in the world: Democrats, Republicans and mayors. “We don’t have time for ideology, partisanship, red state, blue state, all that silliness,” he said. “Our conversation has gone in a lot of different directions today, but at the end of the day, we are about coming up with solutions.”

The solutions discussed included federal resources such as housing vouchers, emergency rental assistance and other protections against evictions. Federal infrastructure investments did not do much to help cities with housing shortages, Kapszukiewicz said. The country needs about 7 million more affordable housing units; in addition, it is losing as many as 15,000 public housing units each year. The units that remain need capital improvements in the range of $70 billion.1

Mental health emerged as another concern at the meeting. “We looked at that as one of the key drivers, but it’s a chicken and egg,” Bass said. “You can have a mental health problem that led to you being unhoused or being unhoused can compromise your mental health.”

The “housing first” approach embraced by the field might be better described as “housing and,” says Jones. “It’s more like housing and health care, housing and mental health, housing and other support services. Where we’ve seen it most successful is in our tiny home village, which has wraparound services provided by one of our contractors.”

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• 1. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who has gained national attention for success in reducing his city’s homeless population, was among the mayors at the task force meeting. Tishaura Jones, the mayor of St. Louis, Mo., commended Turner for bringing stakeholders in his city together, so they could “lock arms” to address homelessness. “We can all do that back in our respective communities,” she said. Turner, whose second term will end at the beginning of January, said he had “decommissioned” 113 homeless camps while in office and reduced the homeless population 65 percent, with 90 percent still housed after two years. “It takes a collaborative effort — cities, counties, states and the federal level.”