As the Los Angeles region struggles to get its arms around how to house the tens of thousands of people living on the streets, L.A. city leaders on Thursday, Sept. 22 returned to a long-running debate over how homeless services should be overseen.
Members of the city council’s Homelessness and Poverty Committee appeared divided over whether the city should begin providing services more directly, or continue working with the regionally focused Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which gets funds from the federal government.
The authority was formed in 1993 at a time when the region faced a homeless crisis and several municipalities and jurisdictions fought over federal funding and had differing views on how to provide homeless services.
Los Angeles City Councilman Bob Blumenfield, who represents District 3 in west San Fernando Valley, said the city should to bow out of the regional system led by LAHSA, and provide its own city-based homeless services.
LAHSA is the lead regional organization that helps the homeless find housing and services, and oversees the annual countywide homeless count. But Blumenfield argued that Los Angeles has recently worked to “build on our city’s homeless response system.”
“At this point, we were already doing the work and we should look at what it takes to bring homeless services in house,” Blumenfield said. “Many of us are building our own pilot programs.” Criticizing LAHSA, he said, “Our regional homeless system is too big in my opinion, and it’s unresponsive to our local needs.”
L.A. Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who represents District 4 stretching from Silver Lake and the Hollywood Hills to Sherman Oaks and Encino, disagreed. She cited concerns raised by city analysts that said leaving LAHSA could mean less funding for the city.
She cited Atlanta, a city that left its regional system and ended up with about half as much funding.
Thursday’s discussion was the latest debate over LAHSA, which has dragged on for three years as homelessness spiked and leaders found themselves contending with the humanitarian crisis and complaints from residents who want encampments removed quickly.
That debate is over who decides how services are provided, and where those resources go. The debate has escalated as people wait for months in interim housing, or to get connected to services.
Monica Rodriguez, a member of the city council Homelessness and Poverty Committee, complained that despite the urgency and need to address complicated issues, there has been little agreement about whether, or how, to revamp the governance of LAHSA.
“Get me off this merry-go-round from hell,” Rodriguez said during the committee hearing, responding to a motion by its chairman, City Councilman Kevin de Leon, who wanted to reopen the debate.
Homelessness has climbed double digits in recent years, but the latest homeless countywide count, conducted in February by LAHSA, gave some city leaders a moment to breathe. The count found that homelessness grew from 2020, but by a relatively modest 1.7%, for a total of 41,980 homeless people.
Discussions about revamping the governance of LAHSA have produced several reports, including one by a Los Angeles County blue-ribbon commission earlier this year.
Rodriguez said that while some may want to “sign the divorce papers” to leave LAHSA, “The implications of doing so might be a short-term political victory, but a long-term disaster.” If the city takes responsibility, separate from the rest of the county, she said, the city could run into problems when term-limited council members leave office.
Raman said the debate on Thursday “feels like “Groundhog Day,” saying council members were “repeating ourselves over and over again, coming up with the same points.”
Raman argued that LAHSA recently made improvements to address LAHSA’s delays in reimbursing service providers who help the homeless. The service providers have struggled to come up with funds while they wait for late reimbursements from LAHSA.
Raman argued that “there have been significant investments and attention paid within LAHSA to working on that — and I’m looking forward to seeing the outcome of of those investments.”
