Debate over homeless funding leaves L.A. city and county at odds yet again

Los Angeles Times

05-04-2025

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It's David Zahniser, with an assist from Julia Wick, giving you the latest on city and county government.
For those who closely follow L.A. politics, it was quite a sight: five members of the City Council walking up the hill to the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration to make an 11th hour case to the Board of Supervisors.
Those council members were worried about the county's plan to pull more than $300 million out of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a city-county agency that has been under fire in recent months. On Tuesday, at the board's regularly scheduled meeting, they warned the supervisors that a speedy withdrawal from LAHSA could disrupt services and halt progress in helping the region's neediest.
'We want to sit with you. We want to work with you. We want to see a timeline that makes sense,' said Councilmember Tim McOsker, who represents the city's harbor-area district.
Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, who is the daughter-in-law of a former county supervisor and a former staffer to a second one, said she feared the city's homeless constituents would suffer if the supervisors pulled their funding from LAHSA.
'So please, please, please, let's work together on a sustainable transition plan,' she told the board.
The supervisors plowed ahead anyway. For months, they had made clear they had lost patience with LAHSA — the target of two scorching audits and scorn from a federal judge — and wanted more accountability for Measure A, a new half-cent sales tax that pays for homeless services. They voted to pull out their funding and create their own homelessness agency, one that would start out with about 1,000 employees.
Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who backed that effort, told council members that the county has been providing LAHSA with a disproportionate share of its administrative costs — far more than the city — and that it was time to deliver homeless services more efficiently.
'Maybe this [proposal] was the important move,' she said. 'Because this is the first time since I've been here that I've seen the council members here on this subject.'
Councilmember Nithya Raman pushed back, pointing out from the audience that she had been to the board on homelessness issues. With Raman standing in the front row, Supervisor Kathryn Barger acknowledged that fact.
The debate over LAHSA has brought the city and county back to a familiar place: divided over strategies for addressing homelessness and, in at least some government offices, distrustful of each other.
The rift comes a little more than two years after Mayor Karen Bass went to the board to mend the fractured relationship between the city and county on homelessness. On that day in December 2022, just a week after taking office, Bass promised to work hand in hand with the supervisors, saying the only way to tackle the crisis would be by 'working in complete partnership.'
Bass, who has long touted her ability to bring people together, did not show up for this week's board vote. Instead, she sent a letter, also signed by Raman, accusing the supervisors of 'unilaterally changing' how the city and county work together on homelessness. In that letter, they warned that the county pullout would jeopardize 'life-saving care' for unhoused residents.
The sense of instability ramped up even more on Friday, after LAHSA's top executive, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, abruptly announced her resignation. Adams Kellum, who worked closely with Bass, said the supervisors' vote made it 'the right time' for her to step down.
Raman and Bass have argued that LAHSA's operations are improving, helping the city secure a double-digit decrease in street homelessness last year. Horvath and Barger portrayed that work as too little, too late, saying it was time to follow through on the recommendations of a blue ribbon commission, which called for a new agency and greater accountability.
The dispute threatens to bring both parties full circle. LAHSA came into being in 1993 in the wake of a battle between the city and county over homeless services.
Nearly four decades ago, the city sued the county, saying it was not fulfilling its legal obligation to serve the indigent population living on L.A. streets. At the time, then-Councilmember Zev Yaroslavsky bemoaned the lack of collaboration between the two government bodies.
'We have sister-city relationships all over the world, but we can't communicate up the street,' Yaroslavsky said, referring to the supervisors, in 1987. 'Instead we write a letter, rather terse, and they write us a terse letter.'
Yaroslavsky, the father-in-law of Councilmember Yaroslavsky, became a county supervisor in 1994. At that point, the city and county had just formed LAHSA, a joint powers authority split between the two entities.
Barger, whose district includes northern stretches of the county, has sought to assuage the fears of L.A. councilmembers, telling them that neither she nor her colleagues are looking to dismantle LAHSA. 'We come in peace,' she remarked at one point.
At the same time, Barger made clear that she was determined to seize direct oversight of the programs run by LAHSA and funded by the new sales tax. Last month, an audit found that LAHSA had not properly tracked the work of its contractors, leaving its programs vulnerable to waste and fraud.
Despite those assurances, this week's proceedings had, at times, a ruthless quality. Adams Kellum, the departing LAHSA executive, received only 90 seconds to defend her agency's work — and had her mic cut off when she went longer.
The signs of tension were not limited to Tuesday's board meeting.
Bass, while attending a March 28 meeting of LAHSA's oversight commission, got into a back-and-forth with Amy Perkins, Horvath's LAHSA appointee, on the consequences of the county pullout. Bass asked Perkins to clarify whether the city would experience any negative impacts.
Perkins replied by saying that, once the transition is finished, an assortment of county homeless programs would be consolidated into a single agency — all with direct oversight from the supervisors.
'The city of Los Angeles will be grateful,' said Perkins, who handles homelessness policy for Horvath. 'Because at the end of the day, we will have more integrated systems of care that include our Department of Mental Health, our Department of Public Health — something I've heard you say on multiple occasions that the county isn't stepping up for.'
Bass, chuckling, replied: 'I can't see any way that the city of Los Angeles is grateful.'
'I think in time you will be,' Perkins said.
At City Hall, some of the anxiety has been fueled by the threat of a nearly $1-billion budget shortfall, which could require cuts to homelessness initiatives. Council members have also voiced frustration with some of the services provided by the county to the region's unhoused population.
Raman, who chairs the council's homelessness committee, said she has sometimes found it easier to obtain data from LAHSA than from county agencies. She voiced particular frustration with the county's Department of Mental Health Services, calling it a major 'pain point' in her fight against homelessness.
'We have found it extremely challenging to get the support that people with mental health issues need,' she said.
Still, Raman pushed back on the idea that the city and county face long-term tensions. She said she and Bass regularly sit with county supervisors on government bodies convened to address the crisis.
'I have a lot of hope and faith in my county partners,' she said. 'I have a lot of hope and faith that we can still find something that really works for us.'
On Friday, a Horvath aide pointed out that her boss reached out to every council member in July 2023, after becoming chair of LAHSA's 10-member commission. In a statement, Horvath acknowleged that the recent discussions haven't been easy.
'These are hard conversations. But change requires them,' she said. 'We can't afford another day of the status quo.'
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