LOS ANGELES — The executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority announced on Monday that he is stepping down at the end of December.

For the past five years, Peter Lynn has been in charge of overseeing the operations of LAHSA as well as delivering the agency's reports on the county's rising homeless population.   

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A national search is being conducted for a permanent replacement. In the meantime, Chief Program Officer, Heidi Marston will serve as interim director.

"It has been a tremendous privilege to lead this organization over the past five years,'' Lynn said in a statement. "I believe that LAHSA is stronger than it has ever been, and I have complete confidence in our management team and our chief program officer's ability to lead the organization during this transition.''

LAHSA officials said that under Lynn's tenure, more than 80,000 people throughout the county were housed. However, during that same timeframe, the number of individuals experiencing homelessness in the county increased by 33 percent.

"Peter's leadership of LAHSA came at a time when Angelenos took historic action and made generational investments in confronting the homelessness crisis,'' Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said. "I wish him success in his future pursuits and am confident that his successor will continue our work to help homeless Angelenos get the housing and services they desperately need.''

Figures from the latest Southland homeless count, released in June, found that more than 36,000 people are homeless in the City of Los Angeles, an increase of 16 percent since last year. Countywide, the homeless population jumped by 12 percent, to nearly 59,000 people.

Lynn told the Los Angeles Times he plans to stay in the homeless field, but would like to be involved in initiatives that he sees as crucial but beyond the scope of LAHSA, which could include mental illness and substance abuse treatment, as well as reentry programs.

"There's a tremendous amount of work there, and we have a long way to go,'' Lynn told the Times. "I think America, in general, provides really poor funding ... for mental health, substance use treatment. And I will say, people are really suffering for that.''

Lynn said he plans to advocate for new housing models to address affordability, especially to replace the single-room occupancy hotels that have all but vanished in Los Angeles.

He also told the newspaper his decision to leave a job that paid him $242,000 a year was partly motivated by a nearly two-month medical absence after an August auto accident left him with a debilitating concussion. The time away allowed him to see things from a new perspective, he said.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn issued a statement saying Lynn "led LAHSA through an historic expansion, from a relatively small agency managing shelters, to a multimillion-dollar organization implementing both the county and cities' homelessness strategies.''

"This was never going to be an easy task but, nevertheless, he welcomed the challenge and his leadership of the agency was important, necessary, and appreciated,'' Hahn said. "Homelessness across L.A. County has become more entrenched and more dire. This crisis demands a new approach that rises to the magnitude of this problem. It will be up to the next leadership at LAHSA to build on Peter's work and ensure this agency can meet this challenge.''

"We have more than doubled the number of people we are able to house out of homelessness over the last five years," Lynn said in a June 24 interview with Alex Cohen on Inside the Issues. "Over 21,600 people housed, and yet at the same time, housing affordability has actually grown worse, so more people are falling into homelessness while we're lifting people out."

 

City News Service contributed to this report.