EDITOR'S NOTE: Multimedia journalist Anna Albaryan highlighted how 71-year-old Norris Williams secured a yearlong lease after experiencing homelessness for more than a decade. Williams expressed his frustration with homeless service providers through the city. Click the arrow above to watch the full video.
LOS ANGELES — On the day a new local tax took effect to combat homelessness, the county Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to create its own department to coordinate regional homeless services, effectively de-funding a joint county-city agency that has long overseen such programs but has come under fire due to the persistent crisis of people living on the streets.
Under the plan approved Tuesday on a 4-0 vote, with Supervisor Holly Mitchell abstaining, the new county agency is expected to be in place by Jan. 1, with all funding pulled from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and transferred to the new county department by July 1, 2026.
The speed of the transition prompted some criticism from the public, including several members of the Los Angeles City Council who spoke to the board and urged more due diligence and coordination with the city before undercutting LAHSA. The LA City Council has voted previously to study the possibility of parting ways with LAHSA, but it has not yet taken action to do so.
Mayor Karen Bass and Councilwoman Nithya Raman wrote a letter to board members asking them to reject the proposed new county department, insisting that progress has been made in the fight against homelessness in the past two years through the coordinated city-county agency, and "we must keep building on this and confronting our challenges, together."
During the board debate, Mitchell proposed an amendment extending the timeline for the creation of the new department to provide more input from regional stakeholders, and to establish metrics to help determine if the new agency was actually an improvement on the current system. The board rejected that amendment.
Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who championed the motion along with Supervisor Kathryn Barger, said the county's urgency is warranted, saying, "Seven people a day die on our streets in Los Angeles County."
"We have studied the homeless service system to death," Horvath said. "Three years ago, the Blue Ribbon Commission on Homelessness conducted an exhaustive study of our complex system and offered common sense reforms. Today, we're discussing implementing two of the (commission's) recommendations, at long last."
Horvath insisted that the current system of homeless services is "siloed and accountability is diffuse."
"It's fair to ask, how will this be different, and how will a county department lead to different outcomes?" she said. "And I want to be clear that this is not more government, it is better government."
In their letter to the board, however, Bass and Raman said the county's action represents a step backward, with the county branching out on its own and away from coordination with the city.
"Dismantling LAHSA will deprive the city of Los Angeles of essential resources, including recent voter-approved Measure A funding, and would severely stunt the city's ability to oversee existing programs that provide holistic solutions to individuals with complex needs," they wrote. "Real people rely on these resources every day and this move puts that life-saving care in jeopardy. 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. It will signal a surrender that street homelessness is a permanent fixture in Los Angeles — and as leaders here in the city, we disagree with that assumption."
Board members, however, insisted it was time for change.
Supervisor Janice Hahn said concerns about the operations of LAHSA and the accounting of millions of dollars in anti-homelessness funding signaled a need for a course change.
"We need to treat homelessness like the crisis it is — but problems with LAHSA (like contract delays & unaccounted funds) have been roadblocks," she said in a statement. "It's time to make a change. That is why I am voting to redirect county funding from LAHSA and create a county Homeless Services Department.
"We owe the people suffering on our streets and taxpayers alike a guarantee that tax dollars are spent as effectively as possible to bring people inside — and we can't say that right now," she said. "Multiple audits have found problems at LAHSA that have undermined confidence in the agency."
LAHSA CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum defended the agency's work, insisting that improvements have been made both in its operations and results.
"I made promises — one would be a reduction in unsheltered homelessness, which we've seen now two years in a row," she said. "To enhance transparency, I promised that we would improve our operations and we have. We've implemented 20 new data dashboards that provide unprecedented insight into how our system functions. The questions you had about functions and system improvements, we can actually provide that data to you today."
LA City Council members Bob Blumenfield, Katy Yaroslavsky, Tim McOsker and Ysabel Jurado also addressed the board expressing concerns about de-funding LAHSA, saying it would hinder progress on curbing homelessness. The council members stressed that the shared goal was being overlooked in the move.
"LAHSA desperately needs more transparency and accountability. However, the speed at which the county is moving raises serious concerns about service disruptions," Jurado said in a statement. "As the council member representing the district with the highest density of unhoused people, I know that any delay in services can be a matter of life or death. We need to balance accountability with stability. Even a divorce doesn't happen overnight."
The county's vote came on the day the countywide sales tax increased by a quarter-cent to provide additional funding for anti-homelessness programs. The increase was approved by voters in November with passage of Measure A, a half-cent sales tax for homeless programs that will be in effect in perpetuity. The tax replaced a previous voter-approved quarter-cent sales tax that was set to expire in 2027.
