A federal judge requires a solution for the broken homeless system in Los Angeles. Is the welcome his next step?

With the best city and the elected representatives of the county seated in his jury box, the judge gave conferences for more than an hour, exciting what he called the Rocky Horror Picture show of the Sans-Abri services in Los Angeles.

But when the time came to reveal the drastic remedy provided by a courtroom full of spectator, the American district judge David O. Carter paused during a hearing last week.

He gave Mayor Karen Bass and the president of the County Supervisors’ Council of Los Angeles, Kathryn Barger, until May, to repair the broken system, tightening only to become “your worst nightmare” if he fails.

“I think that as elected officials, you inherited an extraordinarily difficult task,” he said. “And I imagine that you came to court today thinking that hell and sulfur would cry about you. Quite on the contrary.

A lawyer in the case, alleging that the city had not complied with its obligations in a settlement agreement, urged Carter to employ its ultimate weapon – appointing a receiver to manage the city’s homeless programs.

But this perspective led the often windy judge to turn openly introspective, ruminating on the limits of his power and the risks of using it to try to reverse decades of mismanagement by other branches of the government.

“So, unless you can work this in one way or another, the court will have to do so,” he told Bass and Barger. “And I don’t know what to do on this subject because I am doing my storage.

His dilemma results from a 5 -year trial brought by the Alliance La For Human Rights, a non -profit organization of business owners, owners and residents. He allegedly alleged that the city and the county had not approached the street homeless. Thanks to an order and a settlement agreement concluded earlier in the case, the City is required to create nearly 20,000 new beds for the homeless and to withdraw around 10,000 tents and vehicles from the streets.

A separate regulation obliges the county to pay services in certain beds of the city and to create 3,000 new mental health beds.

Carter surveillance of these agreements took a lively turn last year when the alliance law firm, Umhofer, Mitchell and King, accused the city of non-compliance and asked the judge of refining it $ 6.4 million.

He refused to do so, but, in place of the sanctions, put pressure on the city to pay an external audit of his accounts of the billions of dollars which he spent for the services of the homeless.

This audit, published at the end of February, has found disjointed services and inadequate financial controls leaving the city’s homeless programs likely to waste and fraud. But he focused in particular on the lack of responsibility for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a joint agency trained in the 1990s to manage the without sheltered services for the city and the county.

Thanks to the Sans-Abri sales tax of the H measure H 2017 and a infusion of city and state funds, the Lahsa budget increased more than seven times to its current dollars.

Calling last week’s audience to explore the ramifications of the audit, Carter asked the agency’s general manager, will Lecia Adams Kellum, with Bass, Barger, the president of the municipal council Marquece Harris-Dawson, the city controller Kenneth Mejia and Governor Gavin Newsom.

The judge dealt with the absence of newsom as a predictable discomfort.

“He has a blog and he is busy blog.”

But he deplored that he did not have the power to force Adams Kellums, who then gave an address to the University of Harvard, to be present since Lahsa is not a part appointed to the trial. He suggested twice that the agency should be continued, carrying it under its jurisdiction.

The indignation of the judge in the face of the state of the homeless has flocked for more than an hour, because he cited a handful of audits dating back to decades which, again and again, defeated Lahsa for bad accounting procedures. This week, he published these audits, a total of 490 pages, on his court website.

“It is therefore not new,” said Carter. “This is an old news for elected officials and for Lahsa. There is no audit. There is no transparency. There is no responsibility.”

But his posture became skeptical when the lawyer for the Alliance Matthew Umhofer said that he was planning to petition for a receiver.

“What is supposed to look like?” Asked Carter suddenly. “What is the function of this receiver?” What will they do? “

“The receiver, from our point of view, becomes the homeless tsar of the city,” replied Umhofer.

“It will have to be a gorilla of 800 pounds,” said Carter.

Umhofer said that he would not offer names on the armband but that it should be someone with Gravitas, like Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who supervised compensation for complaints on September 11.

“Anyone know what their costs are?” Carter asked. “I do.”

In a back and forth on what a receiver could do, Umhofer said he could include “budget control around homeless in Los Angeles”.

Carter found this problematic. “No one has elected the court, no one has elected the receiver,” he said. “It could be interpreted as a real intrusion of power. And I try to resolve you, but let’s hear the drama of this for a moment, because I find it difficult to do what it would even be like potentially.”

Umhofer argued that the remedy should be “extraordinary because the failure of the city and the county is extraordinary”.

Because the city failed, he said, the receiver would have the authority “acquired by the court to requisition what it needs in the city in order to solve this problem”.

“It is really a dramatic action of a court,” said Carter. “And if it were to be taken into account, I must be very certain of achievable objectives and why the legislative and executive power cannot achieve it.”

“Because they have not accomplished it, your honor. This is exactly the point … because the executive and legislative branches failed.”

Did the receiver asked Carter, order the member of the Los Angeles Traci Park Municipal Council to continue an unpopular housing project in Venice that she blocked?

“If we need to overcome a little nimbyism to get sheltered and build housing, we must absolutely allow a receiver to do so,” said Umhofer. “This is the kind of power that I would expect that this court exercises if it is confronted with this question.”

When he continued to press the problem, Carter asked, “Ask yourself that the court resumes the whole city?”

Finally, he said, “Go back and think, if you ask for this drama of a reception session, how it really works and why the court would be more effective.”

No mention was made at the hearing of the imminent decision taken Tuesday by the Supervisors Council to strip Lahsa of $ 375 million in annual funding and transfer it to a new county department.

Carter did not give any indication if he would consider this as a positive step or a distraction.

But, in response to a question from Times, the partner of Umhofer, Elizabeth Mitchell, later said that this decision had not responded to their complaints about the city, which did not characterize it more than “move the bridge chairs around the titanic”.

“There must be massive structural changes to solve the underlying problems, and I cannot see them proposed anything closer,” wrote Mitchell in an email.

The firm will soon file a request asking Carter to appoint an receiver, she said.