County supervisors create new homeless agency, despite warnings from L.A. mayor
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The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a plan to move hundreds of millions of dollars out of the region’s homeless services agency on Tuesday, despite warnings from L.A. Mayor Karen Bass about creating a “massive disruption” in the region’s fight against homelessness.
On a 4-0 vote, the supervisors signed off on the strategy to form a new county homelessness department with a budget that would almost immediately exceed $1 billion. By July 2026, the supervisors will move more than $300 million from Measure A, a half-percent sales tax, out of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA, and into the new county agency.
More than 700 county workers will be transferred to the new agency by Jan. 1. Six months later, the new department will finish taking on hundreds more employees from LAHSA, a joint city-county agency that has been derided for years by City Council members, county supervisors and other officials.
County supervisors said the changes will give them more direct oversight and, ultimately, greater accountability, over the funds generated by the Measure A sales tax, which went into effect on Tuesday. That measure, which provides funding for an array of housing and homelessness services, served as a replacement for Measure H, a quarter-percent sales tax approved in 2017.
The L.A. County Board of Supervisors is looking to pull hundreds of millions of dollars out of LAHSA, a move that unnerves some at L.A. City Hall.
“This moment is about the county taking the dollars that taxpayers have entrusted to us and investing them in what works,” said Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who spearheaded the plan.
Supervisors said they were following the recommendations of a blue ribbon commission, which called in 2022 for the creation of a new county homelessness organization and the streamlining of LAHSA’s responsibilities. They also voiced frustration over a pair of stinging audits that sharply criticized LAHSA’s oversight, or lack of it, over its contracts and programs.
The vote was a serious defeat for Bass, who had argued that the changes would result in the creation of yet another bureaucracy, while diverting energy away from efforts to move people indoors. With a huge chunk of its budget slated to disappear, LAHSA’s long-term future is now in question.
Hours before the meeting, Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who heads the council’s homelessness committee, sent the supervisors a letter warning that the changes would ultimately deprive the city of “essential resources.”
“This action would create a monumental disruption in the progress we are making and runs the serious risk of worsening our homelessness crisis, not ending it,” they wrote.
Five council members — Bob Blumenfield, Ysabel Jurado, Tim McOsker, Katy Yaroslavsky and Raman — showed up in person to deliver a similar message, saying they feared the county was delivering a fatal blow to LAHSA, one that would undermine their own efforts to combat homelessness. The city is already in a financial crisis, facing a budget shortfall of just under $1 billion.
Raman said she and other council members had campaigned for Measure A, encouraging L.A. residents to increase the sales tax.
“I believe strongly that these voters may not have supported it if they knew the dollars would be moved into the county without input and partnership from the city,” she said.
For LAHSA, which was formed in 1993 as part of an effort to ensure that the city and county work more collaboratively on homelessness, the decision will produce a financial earthquake. The county provides the largest share of LAHSA’s $875-million annual budget — 40%, or about $348 million, according to the agency’s website. The vast majority of the county’s funds would go to the new agency, according to LAHSA officials.
Horvath said the county, soon to be flush with Measure A revenue, cannot afford to continue the status quo. Combining homelessness programs from multiple county departments will “fundamentally transform oversight and accountability,” she said.
The new agency will be modeled after the county Department of Health Services’ Housing for Health program, which Horvath called “the most successful program across anything being done in the county to date.” That initiative, she said, has a high success rate of moving people into permanent housing and keeping them housed.
Housing for Health began in 2012 to house homeless patients who rotated through the county’s public hospitals, said Sarah Mahin, the program’s director, in remarks to the supervisors Tuesday. Since then, it has expanded to more than 600 workers and an $875-million annual budget.
The program includes homeless outreach teams, financial assistance for tenants at risk of eviction and funds for roughly 3,200 interim housing beds.
“We can do big things — things that work,” Horvath said. “Housing for Health works, and the Board of Supervisors created it.”
Donyielle Holley, homeless programs supervisor for the city of Pomona, welcomed the changes, saying they will ensure that the homeless services system is “responsible to the needs of all stakeholders.”
“The county will be more accountable to the voters who passed Measure A,” she said.
But Supervisor Holly Mitchell, whose South L.A. district stretches from Koreatown to Carson, warned her colleagues that they were moving too quickly — and without a clear strategy to ensure the replacement agency will perform better than LAHSA.
An audit of homeless services provided by Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority found them disjointed and lacking adequate data systems and financial controls.
Mitchell attempted to postpone the start date for the new agency, only to be outvoted. She abstained from voting on the proposal.
Va Lecia Adams Kellum, LAHSA’s chief executive, attempted to spell out her agency’s accomplishments over the last two years, only to have her mic cut off partway into her remarks. Supervisor Kathryn Barger gave her 90 seconds, 30 more than other members of the public.
Nathaniel VerGow, deputy chief programs officer at LAHSA, told the board that he has spent his entire professional career working to end homelessness — and was open to “exploring any efforts to meaningfully move the needle.”
“However, what I don’t understand is the rush of the proposed strategy of moving all services with no real plan in place,” he said. “A timeline is not a plan.”
In the summer last year, LAHSA reported that “unsheltered” homelessness — those living on the street — declined by about 5% across the county and by more than 10% in the city of L.A. LAHSA executives have promised to disclose more progress in the coming weeks.
Critics say progress has been far too slow, particularly when contrasted with the billions of dollars that have been allocated. One audit, commissioned by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, found that LAHSA lacks sufficient financial oversight to ensure that its contractors deliver the services they are paid to provide, leaving the agency vulnerable to waste and fraud.
Last week, Adams Kellum sent Carter a letter saying her agency is working to improve its operations. Carter, who has been overseeing a case involving homelessness services, responded by calling those promises “meaningless.”
Barger said she and her colleagues are “not trying to get rid of LAHSA.” And she promised that accountability for the new homelessness department will rest with the five county supervisors.
“I can only speak for myself, having been in Judge Carter’s courtroom last week — it can’t get any worse,” she said.
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