Hearings in Downtown Los Angeles to Focus on Audit of County’s Homeless Goals

A pair of federal court hearings are set Thursday in litigation brought by a group of downtown business owners who sued the county and city of Los Angeles for allegedly failing to clear homeless encampments and create more shelter beds.

In Thursday morning’s hearing, U.S. District Judge David Carter will hear of the county’s efforts to meet its goals as outlined in last year’s settlement with the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights.

In the agreement, the county pledged to commit up to an estimated $850.5 million in additional funding to increase beds, services, outreach, and interim housing for the most vulnerable people experiencing homelessness.

The new resources are in addition to the $293 million in new funding the county committed to during the course of the lawsuit to provide 6,700 beds for people experiencing homelessness near freeways and for unhoused seniors — bringing the county’s total commitment to more than $1 billion.

The settlement with L.A. Alliance would provide 1,000 new mental health and substance use disorder beds for the unhoused while making available 450 subsidies to provide individuals at risk of homelessness with residential care in board and care beds throughout the county.

County officials said the agreement covers all City Council districts, while committing to providing wrap-around medical and social services for the more than 13,000 permanent and interim housing beds the city committed to build in its separate settlement with L.A. Alliance.

At a previous hearing in the lawsuit, Carter said he was impressed with the county’s progress.

“The county has done an exemplary job in meeting its goals,” the judge said from the bench in Los Angeles federal court. “In fact, it may have over-performed.”

A second hearing scheduled Thursday afternoon will examine details of a forthcoming court-ordered independent audit of all homelessness assistance programs funded by the city of Los Angeles.

The judge said previously he had over a dozen firms to choose from to handle the audit. A time line for completion of the extensive accounting was not immediately available.

The L.A. Alliance seeks to determine whether expenditures made by the city and/or the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority — LAHSA — are effective in reducing homelessness and providing shelter or housing or whether the programs have a negative impact on achieving that goal, according to guidelines for the audit.

The audit would also seek to determine whether public funds are utilized effectively and efficiently by the city, LAHSA and/or service providers; whether accurate data is being used in reporting the results of homelessness assistance programs; whether the city and/or LAHSA has a process to hold service providers accountable for poor performance; and how many net new housing and shelter beds have been created, how many individuals have been placed, and therefore, how many people have been served by each of the programs since March 2020.

Similar independent audits have been undertaken in Oakland, as well as Austin, Texas, and elsewhere.

The homelessness assistance programs to be scrutinized are to include, but are not limited to, programs used by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass in her 2024- 2025 draft budget summary, which includes a $1.3 billion commitment to end homelessness, the filing states.

The audit would look at expenditures by Bass’ Inside Safe program, designed to move unhoused residents from street encampments indoors, and two other agreements.

Both Bass and the head of LAHSA committed to providing increased transparency about money spent on homeless services. Both agreed to publicly post detailed invoices from service providers, a first for the city, Carter said.

L.A. Alliance accuses the city of failing to meet the terms of its 2022 settlement agreement to clear homeless encampments and create more shelter beds. The county settled with plaintiffs last year.

Carter recently said that the plaintiffs were apparently “misled” by the city, but declined to immediately rule on a request by the L.A. Alliance to have the city pay a nearly $6.4 million fine for allegedly missing deadlines detailed in the settlement.

While the proposed fine is still on the table, the latest hearings in Los Angeles federal court have focused on efforts to determine exactly where the dollars budgeted for homeless services have been going and whether those programs are effective.

Carter approved the city and county’s settlements with the L.A. Alliance on the condition that he closely monitor their progress in meeting deadlines and goals.