beginning of the services program. i think we are starting to do that with some of the recognition and noticing the increases that have come out for women who are homeless. trauma is a big part of it. recognizing the safety issues related to their discussion of their past histories with domestic violence and it took -- and intimate partner relationships. rep. garcia: thank you. i yelled back. -- i yield back. rep. waters: thank you very much caret i would like to thank our second panel for their testimony here today. i would like to say a very ms. vizcainos to and mr. haynes. to talk aboutk how their lives have been changed. everybody, give a round of applause. [applause]

rep. waters: mr. mayor, we welcome you. i thank you for the opportunity that you afforded to me and other members of congress to visit with you recently while you helped -- help us to understand exactly what you are doing and what other assistance could be helpful in what you are attempting to do. with that, mr. mayor, you are recognized for five minutes to present your testimony. mayor garcetti: great. thank you so much. thank you for your friendship, your leadership, thank you for your presence. it is not the first time we have testified together. whenever maxine waters is there on an important subject, i am there. this is the most important of all of the subjects i have ever come before you to talk about. i'm grateful to be here before you to have -- to have representative green and representative garcia, and my

dear friend brad sherman who represents my hometown in the san fernando valley. thank you for being part of this. i come before you today as a mayor, as a parent, as a foster parent, as a volunteer, an organizer, and a longtime activist on the issue of homelessness. started when i was 14 on skid row. something that predated even my decade, there was a place where we just posited our social ills and trauma. i think about what the 14-year-old erica garcetti would tell the 48-year-old eric garcetti if he could talk about how far we have come and how far we have not come. the time what causes homelessness and i am sure you have had a great testimonies. i'm the last panel, a panel of one. you are probably tired, hungry, and probably a little depressed hearing some of the things you have heard today. i hope to give you a perspective to give you some hope.

and some belief that this is a human caused problem. that alternately can be a human solved problem as well. there is no issue i work on more than this. mayors across the country are brought together on this issue. mayors ironically have few of the direct power over the causes out of homelessness we have police forces, sanitation departments, but you can't clean or arrest your way out of homelessness. when it comes to building housing, preventing evictions, when we come to the most simple way to explain where homelessness comes from, it is unaffordable housing meets trauma. the trauma may be the manifestation of veterans coming home from war and the horrors of war. women, 91 percent of whom on skid row are the survivors of domestic giant -- domestic violence. mental health gone untreated. substance abuse issues. low wages. these things are different and

each person but some culmination lock of all of those pieces of trauma are shared by everybody. it might just be economic trauma for some. the good news here in los angeles as we do not come to this conversation saying wow, we have a crisis, please figure it out for us. we, as you heard today from a place from >> the national conference for the coalition homelessness saying l.a. has seen -- is seen as the model. i have this conversation with people a lot. i guess the plane is not working because homelessness went up 12%. in the state where the county on that -- on average went up 35% this last year alone. one of the things i point out is that this is not about whether a model is working now, it is about whether we have the resources to fuel that model to success. in military sermons -- military terms, you can have the best trained people and equipment, but if you do not have scale, you will be defeated eventually, even by folks who have less than. it is an interesting thing to

stay with the metaphor. people demand, when they see the horrors on the streets of america and our worst places where are homeless are, you see folks who want us to have a conquering of europe, d-day, and the marshall plan overnight. one of my first points of view, we have to extinguish the fantasy that there is magic formula that within a few weeks or months, this will disappear. that we can ship people off to this place in the desert or on the beach, or create a massive tent and move them away. that is not how this gets done. on the other extreme, i want you to hear it is not get rid of the senegal hopelessness that we cannot solve this problem. that is not how this gets done. oni will give you a couple of cases of how i have that faith in my bones. in four years of addressing this problem in los angeles, we have doubled the success we have had in the number of people that we house. statistics are tough because they can pop -- they can cut both ways but statistics are stories. numbers are narratives of real

people. i have spent a lot of time on the streets, i was walking los angeles river talking to folks living in tents, hearing their lived experience, trying to take my power as mayor and saying this is the day you should come home, you should go out of homelessness. we went from 9000 people being housed a years -- a year to 21,003 hundred. if you told me that four years ago, i would say we are on our way home to solving homelessness. it is rare to get that success where you can double that. 21,000, 27,000he found their own way out of homelessness. int year, 48,000 real people los angeles moved from homelessness into homes. new people went into homelessness. so when we see an increase, it is not that success is with not working, it is that we do not have the scale and we are not preventing it from happening in the first place. the second point, federal governments have to be a part of this. in the 1980's when the

federal government stepped up on homeless, -- homelessness, it made a difference. we calculated between the state which got rid of our redevelopment dollars and federal cuts to our affordable housing dollars, 20 million dollars of affordable housing over the last decade disappeared. if we had kept the level of funding from 10 years ago, about 20,000 people worth of housing would be put in l.a. counting enough for us to not have gone up, but to reduce homelessness. i see the red lights, so let me leave you with two things. this is a public health crisis. new data that -- it says that those who are not -- on the streets versus those on the shelters are 25 times more likely to have triple morbidity of substance abuse, mental health, and physical health problems. if we think this is only a housing problem, we need to make sure the health issues are

there. second, when the federal government stepped up for our veterans in los angeles, we housed more homeless veterans than anywhere in the country. we reduced by 80% the number of veterans. we have housed double the number that we started with. because of new folks coming out on the street every day. third, we have to look at prevention. to pass maxine waters passing homelessness act now. now. [applause] mayor garcetti: and i will say this last thing to our president, i retired from the navy so he is not in my chain of command militarily anymore. but when he was in japan recently, he said a few words about the city and san francisco. he said the streets were so said it is disgusting or whatever you -- or whatever words he used. he said he may have to do something about it. he said this problem started two years ago. areesponse, and i know we

supposed to punch our political opponents back, i did not. homelessness is an opportunity and a good day. or have us come to the white house and bring a coalition of independent republican and democratic mayors who struggle with this issue, and he wants to save lives, we will call his bluff on that and we will say, we can save lives together. i told him, this problem did not start two years ago when he became president and it did not start six years ago when i became mayor. it has been a legacy of decades of neglect but it is on our watch to end it in washington d c must and will. thank you. rep. waters: thank you very much, mr. mayor. [applause] will nowrs: i recognize myself for five minutes to raise a few questions with you. i am very pleased about your legislation, and

we develop this legislation, understanding that $13 billion was going to raise some eyebrows. but we believe if we are to end the homelessness, we have to put theresources to apply to problem. and so, having said that, i wanted to ask you a little bit about your budget. in addition to the federal money that you received from washington, d.c., that we give to all of the states and cities, there was an initiative that was passed. i believe it was hhh. where u.s. -- he received additional resources. i know you put those resources to work. i'm interested in one aspect of that now and that is the transitional housing. which i think is extremely exciting and you showed us an example of it on the screen.

and i want to know how many have you developed? how many are you going to develop? and will that include a south-central or south los angeles? mayor garcetti: absolutely it will including in your district. it is interesting you talk about the 13 billing which should raise eyebrows. it is a sad comment tatian when we think $13 billion will raise eyebrows when the city and county together have raised about $4.5 billion. in housing, money, and services money. we are 3% of the nation's population. if you do the math, we should have $120 billion. your ambition is not only impressive, it should be looked at as a start. if you match what l.a. has done, the federal government would be putting $120 billion. if, you look at the homeless population, would maybe be 40 or

50. we have two measures that have passed. hhh is the largest housing measure in u.s. history. it leverages $5 billion worth of housing from people looking at shipping containers and new innovative ways to do it cheaper and faster, to traditional really beautifully built apartments for folks who have the deepest need and perhaps the triple diagnosis that i mentioned before and will need to have services for the rest of their lives. we have 110 projects of permanent housing. on the transitional housing side, we have 25 transitional housing shelters that we are looking to open up in the next 12 months. four of which are already open. in south los angeles, we have i would say almost preponderance of those. leave thisoing to hearing for a moment as the u.s. house gets ready to gaveling for a pre--- a brief pro forma session. we will return to the session once it goes out. taking you live now on c-span. [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives.

any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the .s. house of representatives.] the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's room, washington, d.c., august 20, 2019. i hereby appoint the honorable william lacy clay to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, nancy pelosi, speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: the prayer will be offered by the guest chaplain, reverend michael wilker, lutheran church of the reformation, washington, d.c. the chaplain: