The Los Angeles County County Supervisors Council on Tuesday approved a plan to move hundreds of millions of dollars from the region’s homeless service agency, despite the warnings of the mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass to create a “massive disturbance” in the region’s fight against roaming.
During a 4-0 vote, supervisors signed the strategy to form a new county roaming service with a budget that would almost immediately exceed $ 1 billion. In July 2026, supervisors will move more than $ 300 million from measure A, a semi-celle sales tax, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or Lahsa, and in the new County Agency.
More than 700 county workers will be transferred to the new agency by January 1. Six months later, the new department will finish taking hundreds of other Lahsa employees, a joint agency for the City Counties which has been mourning for years by members of the municipal council, county supervisors and other civil servants.
County supervisors said that the changes will give them more direct surveillance and, ultimately, greater responsibility, on the funds generated by the measurement of a sales tax of half a hundred, which entered into force on Tuesday. This measure, which provides funding for a range of housing and homeless services, replaced measure H, a quarter of a quarter of a hundred approved in 2017.
“This moment concerns the county which takes the dollars that the taxpayers entrusted to us and investing them in what works,” said the supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who directed the plan.
The supervisors said that they were following the recommendations of a blue ribbon commission, which called in 2022 for the creation of a new organization of the county home and the rationalization of Lahsa’s responsibilities. They also expressed frustration in the face of a pair of pungent audits that have brutally criticized the surveillance of Lahsa, or its absence, on its contracts and its programs.
Voting was a serious defeat for Bass, who had argued that the changes would lead to the creation of another bureaucracy, while diverting the energy far from the efforts to move people inside. With a huge part of its budget which was to disappear, the long -term future of Lahsa is now in question.
A few hours before the meeting, the bass and the member of the municipal council Nithya Raman, who heads the Council’s homeless committee, sent supervisors a letter warning that the changes would ultimately deprive the city of “essential resources”.
“This action would create a monumental disruption of the progress that we make and covers the serious risk of aggravating our crisis of without-abrism, endless,” they wrote.
Five members of the council – Bob Blumenfield, Ysabel Jurado, Tim Mcosker, Katy Yaroslavsky and Raman – presented themselves in person to transmit a similar message, saying that they feared that the county would give Lahsa a fatal blow, which would undermine its own efforts to fight against the Lownside. The city is already in financial crisis, faced with a budget deficit of just under a billion dollars.
Raman said that she and other members of the Council had campaigned for measure A, encouraging residents of Los Angeles to increase the sales tax.
“I firmly believe that these voters may not have supported it if they knew that the dollars would be transferred to the county without contribution and partnership of the city,” she said.
For Lahsa, which was formed in 1993 as part of an effort to ensure that the city and the county work more in collaboration on homelessness, the decision will produce a financial earthquake. The county offers the largest share of the annual budget of $ 875 million in Lahsa – 40%, or about $ 348 million, according to the agency’s website. The vast majority of county funds would go to the new agency, according to Lahsa officials.
Horvath said the county, who will soon be hunting for income measurement, could not afford to continue the status quo. The combination of roaming programs from several county departments “will fundamentally transform surveillance and responsibility,” she said.
The new agency will be modeled after the Housing for Health Program in the County Health Services department, which Horvath described the “most successful program of everything in the county to date”. This initiative, she said, has a high success rate to move people in permanent housing and keep them hosted.
Health housing began in 2012 to host homeless patients who turned into the county’s public hospitals, said Sarah Mahin, program director, in supervisors on Tuesday. Since then, it has extended to more than 600 workers and an annual budget of $ 875 million.
The program includes unanswered awareness teams, financial assistance for tenants at risk of expulsion and funds for around 3,200 temporary housing beds.
“We can do great things – things that work,” said Horvath. “Housing for health work and the supervisor council have created it.”
Donyielle Holley, supervisor of the programs for the homeless of the city of Pomona, praised the changes, claiming that they will ensure that the homeless service system is “responsible for the needs of all stakeholders”.
“The county will be more responsible for the voters who adopted measure A,” she said.
But the Holly Mitchell supervisor, whose South district extends from Koreatown to Carson, warned his colleagues that they moved too quickly – and without a clear strategy to ensure that the replacement agency will work better than Lahsa.
Mitchell tried to postpone the start date of the new agency, to be exceeded. She refrained from voting on the proposal herself.
VA Lecia Adams Kellum, Managing Director of Lahsa, has tried to state the achievements of her agency in the past two years, only for her microphone to be cut halfway in her remarks. The Kathryn Barger supervisor gave him 90 seconds, 30 more than the other members of the public.
Nathaniel Vergow, director of deputy chief programs in Lahsa, told the board of directors that he had spent his entire professional career to work to end homelessness – and that he was open to “explore efforts to significantly move the needle”.
“However, what I do not understand is the rush of the proposed strategy to move all the services without any real plan in place,” he said. “A calendar is not a plan.”
Last summer, Lahsa reported that “unbreded” homelessness – those who live in the street – had decreased by around 5% in the county and by more than 10% in the leaders of the city of Lahsa promised to reveal more progress in the coming weeks.
Critics say that progress has been far too slow, especially in contrast to the billions of dollars that have been allocated. An audit, commanded by the American district judge David O. Carter, concluded that Lahsa lacks sufficient financial monitoring to ensure that its entrepreneurs provide the services they are paid to provide, leaving the agency vulnerable to waste and fraud.
Last week, Adams Kellum sent a letter to Carter saying that his agency tried to improve its operations. Carter, who supervised a case involving roaming services, replied by calling for these “meaningless” promises.
Barger said that she and her colleagues “do not try to get rid of Lahsa”. And she promised that the responsibility of the new homeless department would rest with the five supervisors of the county.
“I can only speak for myself, after being in the courtroom of Carter judge last week-that cannot get worse,” she said.
California Daily Newspapers
