Dear Friend:

Solving the homelessness crisis remains a top priority for the City and for me. To meet the need, the City has built interim and permanent housing and delivered support services for unsheltered folks for the last five years. Sadly, it took years of litigation for the depth of our systemic dysfunction at LAHSA and Countywide to gradually come to light in the LA Alliance case before US Superior Court Judge David O. Carter. And in the most recent federal case, this week Judge Carter issued an injunction blocking the Trump Administration from stopping HUD funding for LAHSA to address homelessness.

Judge Carter has paused the funding crisis for now, but as a region we must come together to provide accountability for tax dollars and find a sustainable organizational structure to respond to homelessness. This will take serious deep policy and financial discussions, negotiations between the City, the County, the service providers, and the funders at the state and federal level. I genuinely hope everyone can rise to the occasion and come to the table to find solutions.

There is no easy answer to which entity should lead on homelessness for the City. This is a system riddled with historical dysfunction. LAHSA has been the joint County/City organization that oversees programs, contracting and funding. For many years I have voiced my frustrations with the lack of accountability in LAHSA’s delivery of homeless services. As a member of the Housing and Homelessness Committee I have constantly questioned LAHSA’s leadership and struggled to get satisfactory answers that your money is well spent.

The County recently pulled out of LAHSA, taking its funding to establish its own Homelessness Department. The County would like to be the lead on homelessness, and in many ways they are best situated to manage this work. By Charter, the County is lead on social service programs- the City is not. The County receives billions of tax dollars to run the Department of Mental Health, facilitate Medi-Cal and CalFresh and countless other programs that help with children and families and persons with disabilities.

However, the County has not adequately provided the mental health, substance abuse, and medical services that the City’s unsheltered and interim housing residents need. Most of us have seen very sick people on the streets who desperately need help, and even when these folks come into our interim housing programs they don’t get all the help they need from the County. Some believe trusting the County to manage the City’s programs would be foolish given this track record.

Unfortunately, at this time the City does not have the staff, funding, or capacity to manage our own homelessness services, which is one reason why LAHSA was created in the first place. The other reason was to settle a 1991 lawsuit against the County for not adequately addressing their legal responsibilities to provide these services — critical issues that are still not resolved.  The County has all the leverage and federal/state funding, and I worry about the City pursuing our own path without the County’s collaboration and resources.  

Any future organization, regardless of who runs it,  must ensure that the City has some “control” to place people in the right type of interim housing and ensure that sicker folks receive higher levels of care and support. We want to make sure Angelenos have access to the services they deserve. I hope there is a good faith effort by the County, my City colleagues, funders, service providers, to develop a path to help people experiencing homelessness on our City streets and in our interim and permanent supportive housing beds get the help they need at a price we can afford.

Caltrans District 7 is leading the LA River Community Connections Study to evaluate opportunities to improve connections to the LA River Trail for people walking and biking. The Study will identify four geographic focus areas, collecting input on each area from community members, local and regional agencies, community organizations, and advocacy groups along the river.

Within the focus areas, the project team will evaluate existing gaps and barriers to accessing the LA River Trail (especially in Caltrans right-of-way), develop proposed design alternatives to address these challenges, and identify funding and implementation opportunities in coordination with partner agencies. Your feedback will help Caltrans understand community priorities for making the LA River a more equitable and accessible trail. Participate in the survey here.

This week's photo, taken in 1960, is from the Los Angeles Public Library's Valley Times Collection of West Valley students spending their summer evenings at the Future Engineers of America building learning about new engineering principles which they discover under the guidance of their mentors. Learn more about the photo here.