In December of 2016, the City of Los Angeles launched Safe Sidewalks LA, a 30-year, $1.4 billion program to make sidewalks accessible to everyone. The program was forged as the result of a settlement agreement in response to litigation brought against the City by advocates for the disabled.
Following the litigation and settlement agreement, the City designed a program under which repairs would be made over 30 years.
The program required the completion of an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) that was legally challenged over concerns that mature trees across the City would be removed in the process of repairing sidewalks without adequate effort to save them. That litigation resulted in further program refinements.
The city is committed to repairing sidewalks and improving accessibility. However, this is a large undertaking that will take time, effort and resources.
The need far outweighs the resources available.
There are several programs, including the Access Request Program, which makes repairs requested by/for people with a mobility disability; the Sidewalk Rebate Program, which reimburses eligible property owners for a portion of the cost of their sidewalk repair; and Report a Sidewalk program for requesting sidewalk repair that does not fall within one of the other categories.
More info at https://safesidewalks.
We note that recently local sidewalk repair requests placed through the 311 system have been filed by local residents and the files were swiftly “closed” without any visible changes.
If this happens with any requests you have filed, please forward those requests to WSSM so we may log them into an inventory for submission to the City. Send to info@wssmhos.org —-Subject: Sidewalk Repair.