U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter kicked off the hearing in November with a searing review of the city\u2019s \u201cpattern of defiance of settlement agreement and the deadlines contained within it with performance or performative compliance only resulting in the wake of court hearings.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Sept. 2023 image of U.S. District Judge David O. Carter pausing in front of the Midnight Mission while leading a tour of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
(Genaro Molina\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Four days of testimony, spread over nearly two months, have produced a striking record of confusion and disagreement over the meaning of basic terms such as \u201chomeless encampment\u201d and \u201cpersons served,\u201d leaving the impression of a city that skews definitions when it can\u2019t live up to the common ones. <\/p>\n
If an outreach worker tells a person on the street a shelter bed is waiting for them, is that an \u201coffer?\u201d Not by the city\u2019s definition, Szabo testified Monday. An offer occurs only when someone checks into the shelter to occupy a bed.<\/p>\n
The distinction matters because the court has required the city to \u201coffer\u201d shelter to anyone whose tent or makeshift shelter is to be removed in pursuit of the settlement. But the city can\u2019t track how often \u201coffers\u201d are made, Szabo acknowledged.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe elected to use PEH [person experiencing homelessness] served as our best good-faith effort to comply with that requirement,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a metric that we are reasonably able to verify.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPEH served,\u201d he testified, means people who occupy a bed.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s defense is that it\u2019s doing the best it can and making progress on the goals of the May 2022 settlement.<\/p>\n
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Dorm beds at the Midnight Mission homeless shelter in Skid Row.<\/p>\n
(William Liang\/For The Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good news now is that the city has made extraordinary progress since then,\u201d argued Theane Evangelis, lead attorney for the city\u2019s outside law firm. \u201cIt\u2019s served more than 8,000 people, has more than 8,000 beds online, more than 5,000 in progress. Your Honor, these numbers reflect Herculean efforts to combat homelessness, not a pattern of delay or obstruction.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2020 case was filed by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group made up primarily of business and property owners who want cleaner streets. The lawsuit also named Los Angeles County, which reached a separate settlement in 2023. Lawyers for the group contend the city is willfully obfuscating to cover up its inadequate efforts to live up to its settlement. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur clients, both the housed and unhoused communities at large, were promised more than aspirational rhetoric, Your Honor,\u201d their attorney Elizabeth Mitchell said in her opening statement. \u201cThey were promised measurable action, verified by data, overseen by this court. Three years into the settlement, the city still fights oversight harder than it fights homelessness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two advocacy groups \u2014 the L.A. Community Action Network and Los Angeles Catholic Worker \u2014 are intervening on behalf of homeless people in the case. Representing them, Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles attorney Shayla Myers has argued passionately that they need protection from both parties in the litigation.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s been especially focused on the city, which she suspects is using the encampment reduction plan \u201csimply to erase the visible evidence of homelessness on our streets and hide the fact that homelessness is not getting better.\u201d <\/p>\n
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\u201cA lot of the homeless out here don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening out here for funding,\u201d said Colby Johnson, left, about lack of financial oversight for homelessness spending, in front of his tent in Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
(Genaro Molina\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Under intense cross-examination by Myers on Monday, Szabo struggled to defend his testimony that the city was continuing to maintain \u201clargely or almost all\u201d of about 7,000 beds it was required to produce under a previous agreement that expired at the end of June. He clarified that the was referring to physical beds created by the city and acknowledged that more than 2,000 of those beds were leased with temporary subsidies that expire in two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how many are still being used today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The contempt hearing, a mini-trial within a trial, is the latest drama in a marathon case that has included: a 110-page order <\/a>\u2014 overturned on appeal \u2014 that would have required the city to house everyone on Skid Row; an order requiring the city to provide housing for everyone living under a freeway overpass<\/a>; the 7,000 beds; a further settlement requiring the city to create another 12,915 beds and remove 9,800 encampments; a slow-burning battle over what an encampment is \u2014 for purposes of the settlement it is a single tent, vehicle or makeshift shelter; an order for a $3-million audit<\/a> of the city\u2019s homeless programs; a hearing on whether to place those programs under a receiver<\/a>; the hiring of a 15-member<\/a> outside legal team to fight receivership whose billings are $1.8 million and counting; the appointment of a monitor<\/a> instead of a receiver; and the appeal of that monitor\u2019s appointment<\/a>, which was not even the last appeal in the case.<\/p>\n The current hearing largely focuses on one paragraph in the 2022 settlement that defines \u2014 in retrospect, poorly \u2014 seven metrics of progress the city must report to the court quarterly.<\/p>\n Three address beds: \u201cthe number of housing or shelter opportunities created or otherwise obtained, the number of beds or opportunities offered, and the number of beds or opportunities currently available in each Council District.\u201d <\/p>\n Sage, right, becomes emotional as city workers clear the nearby homeless encampment in Van Nuys. \u201cIt seems difficult,\u201d said Sage about living homeless. \u201cThere are people in war. And this was safer. We have to be grateful. It can be worse than this,\u201d she concluded. <\/p>\n (Genaro Molina\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n And four, with the qualifier, \u201cto the extent possible,\u201d address people: \u201cthe number of PEH engaged, the number of PEH who have accepted offers of shelter or housing, the number of PEH who have rejected offers of shelter or housing and why offers were rejected, and the number of encampments in each Council District.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo the extent possible\u201d became the cornerstone of the city\u2019s explanation of why it had used the number of beds occupied as a catch-all for the city\u2019s interactions with people.<\/p>\n Acknowledging that the city hasn\u2019t reported every item required, Evangelis argued in her opening statement in November that the agreement \u201cspecifies that, quote, the city will work with LAHSA to include some of those items, quote, to the extent possible. That\u2019s critical.\u201d<\/p>\n Testimony that followed drew a picture of how hard and time-consuming it would be to gather that information from the homeless database called HMIS \u2014 maintained not by the city but by the independent Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority \u2014 but little evidence that the city pursued \u201cto the extent possible\u201d with much zeal.<\/p>\n The perpetual-motion nature of the proceeding is wearing the patience of at least one City Council member who initially supported the litigation in principle.<\/p>\n![\"Sage,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768584021_797_.jpeg\")
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