Los Angeles County will conduct future homeless counts and apply for federal grants on behalf of the region’s homeless services providers, taking over two functions from the beleaguered Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
But a vote Tuesday approving that transition sidestepped a battle between the county and City of Los Angeles over other federally-mandated duties long performed by LAHSA.
No new date was set to decide whether the city or county, or some collaboration between the two, will run the database that records contacts with homeless people and the system that matches people to housing.
The county faced no opposition to its bid for the point-in-time count and the regional application, but the city submitted competing bids for the database and matching system.
After an aborted attempt last week to shift all of LAHSA’s federal functions to the county, the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, an amorphous decision-making body consisting of anyone in the county involved in homeless services, narrowed its agenda Tuesday to the homeless count and federal grant application. Both those items were approved.
The dismemberment of LAHSA began last year when the Board of Supervisors voted to take control of more than $300 million in local sales taxes previously managed by LAHSA and created the county Department of Homeless Services and Housing.
The Trump administration touched off the shift of LAHSA’s federal mandates when it suspended LAHSA in June, citing reports of mismanagement and possible fraud.
As the city and county fight to take over LAHSA’s duties, an obscure decision-making body called the Continuum of Care has been placed in the spotlight. Both sides have taken extraordinary measures to try to influence how the CoC, as its known, can vote.
The CoC had been scheduled to vote last Friday on transferring LAHSA duties, a move ordered by a federal judge in a case the agency filed after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development suspended it.
In rallying voters before the CoC meeting, Bass said that giving the county complete control of the “counting, tracking, placement and allocation of services to our unhoused and housing burdened Angelenos” would “exacerbate the city’s own homeless response” and continue a system that has not served the city well.
Rallied by the last-minute message blitz from the mayor, more than 1,500 people tried to register to vote online overwhelming the 1,000-attendee limit of the agency’s Zoom account. Historically, no more than 100 had voted, the CoC said. The vote was canceled.
In an equally bizarre countermove Tuesday, LAHSA expanded its Zoom capacity to 10,000 attendees but just over 300 voters registered online.
Before to Tuesday’s vote, CoC chair Ben Kay gave a recap of measures the board took to administer an impartial evaluation that scored the county higher than the city on handling homelessness issues. But he said nothing about how the CoC will deal with the looming contest between the city and county.
Kay heads a 21-member board that makes recommendations to the membership which then votes up or down on them. The CoC charter defines the membership as “persons and entities interested in collaborative, solution-oriented planning to address homelessness in LA County,” a definition that could easily include thousands of potential voters.
Anyone voting must make an attestation online, or on paper for those attending in person, that they are a member.
Signaling a potential means to deflect a future get-out-the-vote blitz, Kay said that anyone affiliated with Los Angeles County was required to recuse themselves and physically leave the meeting room if in person or join a breakout room online.
In response, about half those attending the meeting left LAHSA’s commission meeting room where the CoC also meets. Kay announced the vote as 313 in favor and 9 opposed, with 12 abstensions.
In the end, both the county and Bass got something. The county won control of the annual homeless count and will apply for federal grants on behalf of homeless service providers.
But as Bass hoped, the county did not secure the database that records contacts with homeless people or the system that matches people to housing. The sparring over those two issues will continue.
After a closed session of the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson announced that the council instructed the city attorney to develop litigation options in case negotiations for co-management of the programs is not successful.
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