Faced with a large budget gap, Los Angeles County on Thursday released a spending plan that slashes funding for some homeless services and could reverse progress made in getting people off the streets.
The plan for next fiscal year starting July 1 details how the L.A. County Department of Homeless Services and Housing proposes to spend money collected through the county’s Measure A sales tax that pays for things like outreach, temporary housing subsidies and the cost to operate both shelters and permanent housing.
In all, the department is proposing to spend $634,305,000 on comprehensive homeless services, down 0.5% from this year. Most of that money comes from Measure A, but about $70 million is expected to come from a state grant.
The decline isn’t much on a percentage basis, but the county said the cost to run shelters and permanent housing is rising. The county also is losing some one-time funding from the state and federal government that previously covered some services.
Because of that, the department said to maintain current service levels it would need $865 million — about $230 million more than is available.
“This is a very challenging budget year — and painful for all of us,” Sarah Mahin, director of the county’s homeless department, told an online town hall Thursday.
Mahin said the draft spending plan tries to preserve the number of available beds and housing units and proposes to make big cuts to outreach and navigation programs that help homeless individuals get access to that housing as well as treatment. That includes programs that pay workers to hit the streets to meet people where they are.
The county also will stop funding four safe parking sites for people who live in their vehicles.
Eli Veitzer, chief executive of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles, said he understood why it was important to prioritize funding for existing shelter and permanent housing sites, but said the cuts to outreach and navigation services will be “catastrophic.”
“We will see real negative impacts,” Veitzer said. “The number of people who are on the streets I think is going to go up.”
The plan, still in draft form, now heads to oversight committees for feedback and potential changes. It is expected to be submitted in January to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, which must give final approval.
The planned cuts come amid other challenges. Last week the Trump Administration announced it was drastically scaling back the federal government’s investment in local permanent supportive housing and shifting funds to temporary housing.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a joint city-county agency, estimates those cuts could cause roughly 5,000 formerly homeless households to lose their permanent housing, raising the risk that they end up back on the streets or in shelters and thus erasing the small decline in homelessness reported last year.
“This is a terrible time for local officials to consider a … cut to homeless services,” said Jerry Jones, executive director of the Greater L.A. Coalition on Homelessness, which represents nonprofit service providers. “In the face of massive federal cuts, Measure A is our lifeboat and now L.A. County wants to saw off the stern.”
Mahin called the reduction in federal funding for permanent housing a challenge but said the county and other government agencies will explore ways to keep those people housed despite the expected drop in federal support.
The draft spending plan is for the second full year of Measure A funding. Last November voters approved the half-cent tax to fight homelessness, which was an increase from the previous quarter-cent levy known as Measure H.
Though Measure A is raising more money than its predecessor, much of the additional tax hike flows to a newly established county agency to build affordable housing, which takes time, while the sales tax percentage flowing to the county for core homeless services has remained largely the same.
As a result, officials say that although more money is being raised, the county has less funds available for things such as job training, outreach and landlord incentives as the economy slows and consumers spend less.
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