Karen Bass was sworn in Sunday as Los Angeles’ first female mayor, telling the onlooking crowd gathered in downtown LA that her first priority is tackling the homeless problem: “We will never give up. That is our LA magic.”
After Steve Wonder serenaded with “Living for the City” and “Keep Our Love Alive,” Bass addressed the audience, calling for Los Angelinos to work together for a better future.
Bass expressed pride in the accomplishments and the future of some of the female officeholders in attendance, including Vice President Kamala Harris — a California native — and the all-women LA County Board of Supervisors, all of whom she said she looks forward to working with to serve the needs of the community.
“We are so proud of our state… and we have it enshrined in our constitution that a woman has a right to decide what happens to her body,” Bass said, adding that the surge of women in office reflects how California has been a leader in opportunities for women to have a voice.
The new mayor got right to her pledge to tackle LA’s homelessness problem, saying the community must address the issue of the city “having 40,000 people sleeping on the street.”
One of her first acts as mayor come Monday “will be to declare a state of emergency on homelessness,” she said, and that will call for working with the county since “we know that problems don’t stop at our city limits. We have to address the county as a whole.”
Growing up in LA, she watched as her mother raised four children and the family could afford to buy a home on just her father’s income as a postal worker. But through the decades, she has seen it become harder and harder to afford to buy a home. Bass said one of the fundamental answers to the homeless problem will be for public officials to partner with builders to provide more homes all over the city and county.
“We never give up. We have never given up, and we will never give up. That is our LA magic,” she said.
The first step, she said, will be to seek aid from county, state and federal officials to help LA’s efforts to improve the homelessness problem.
“Look for me on your caller ID, because I will be calling you,” she told Gov. Gavin Newsom and Vice President Harris.
Bass also wants to work with local business leaders to make progress on affordable housing and other issues, like helping businesses thrive in the post-pandemic world. “I am ready to partner with you,” she said. “When businesses open, when businesses grow, when businesses thrive, they hire people.”
The new mayor reached out to communities at large and invited them to Los Angeles, where she said they can find hundreds of “good union jobs” and encouraged Angelinos to “literally come and work for the city of Los Angeles.” Determined to make LA the leader in using “clean and green” energy, Bass wants to see jobs in that sector filled by Angelinos.
Wrapping up with a message of hope, Bass said that Angelinos can solve problems together for a city “where people are housed and the tents are gone, a city where murals replace graffiti, and we lock arms until we get the job done.”
