Re: “Rental Assistance Saved ‘Indefinitely’”

City Councilman Jeff Cooper was both succinct and clear when asked why he supported Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells’s barely (3 to 2) winning motion last evening to “indefinitely” fund the soon-to-be-broke rental assistance program.

“I did not vote for Meghan’s funding motion,” Mr. Cooper told the newspaper.

“I voted to take care of the elderly and disabled who are dependent on this funding to assist them with their housing needs.”

When Mayor Sahli-Wells heard what her colleague had said, she nodded in muscular agreement. “Jeff is right,” she said. “It is not about me. It is about the people we are helping.”

Entering the meeting, which spanned a near-record eight hours, the most compassionate mayor in modern times did not know if she could recruit two allies on the dais who would agree to dip into the General Fund for supporting various rental assistance programs once the Housing pot goes broke on the last day of the fiscal year, June 30.

The setting, in the packed Rotunda Room of the Vets Auditorium, was dramatically jammed with partisans who agree down the line with the progressive views of Ms. Sahli-Wells.

Standing with Her

That was fine but, as the youngest member of the Council, she needed the support of two of her four middle-aged colleagues.

While hearing a parade of speakers, including rental assistance beneficiaries and sympathizers, declare volubly their gratitude to City Hall, the mayor took notes, the better to buttress her case for dipping into the sometimes-sacred General fund. This was about helping needy, sometimes desperately needy people, she argued. This was not so much fiscal as it was humanitarian.”

That is Mayor Sahli-Wells’s mantra centerpiece:

When you authorize a project, that is about spending/investing money.

But when you are aiding the poor, elderly, disabled, homeless and otherwise hobbled, the obligation to aid fellow human beings transcends any uncomfortableness about laying out money.

The Council approved the mayor’s motion to fund the Rental Assistance Program for an open-ended number of years from the General Fund, until an alternate source can be found.

No Newcomers

Ms. Sahli-Wells asserted last evening, “as a point of clarification” that the list of recipients in the time-limited Rental Assistance Program has not been and will not be reopened for new households – because of the financial crunch.

“The important decision we had to make was whether to phase out the people already in this program,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said. (They were protected.) “It was really moving, and I took notes on some comments.

“One recipient of the RAP program was a disabled gentleman who said ‘Having a home has helped me deal with my disability.’

“Another disabled woman,” the mayor continued, “said ‘the RAP program saved my life.’ She said ‘the Housing Dept. saves lives, just like the Fire Dept. and the Police Dept.’

“Tom Wilson is a Culver City resident who is board president of Upward Bound House. He said, ‘We at Upward Bound House know that family homelessness is curable.’”

With her compassion bubbling toward the surface, Ms. Sahli-Wells said that ‘I took these notes because,” and she paused, “these feelings are not going to be reflected in the minutes.”

(To be continued)