LOS ANGELES \u2014 What started as a calming daily ritual has taken on new meaning for Tiffany Duverney-Smith.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
About\u00a0284 LAHSA employees were notified their positions are being eliminated, including 216 union workers represented by SEIU Local 721
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The layoffs follow a decision by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to pull more than $300 million in funding from LAHSA last year
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That move followed\u00a0a series of audits\u00a0which\u00a0found the agency\u00a0failed to\u00a0properly track taxpayer dollars
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The new county-run homeless department is expected to be fully operational by July 1st<\/p>\n
\u201cFrankincense, the king of essential oils\u2026 and Ylang Ylang, the queen,\u201d she said, walking through the scents she now leans on to manage stress.<\/p>\n
But lately, she said, staying grounded has become more difficult.<\/p>\n
Duverney-Smith, an employee with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), recently learned she could soon be out of a job.\u00a0She\u2019s\u00a0one of\u00a0nearly 300\u00a0workers affected by sweeping layoffs tied to a major overhaul of how Los Angeles County handles homelessness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very concerned about my current situation,\u201d she said. \u201cMy faith tells me that God didn\u2019t bring me this far to leave me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spectrum News met her inside the home she recently\u00a0purchased\u00a0with her husband.\u00a0They had just a handful of mortgage\u00a0payments\u00a0and now she worries about losing it.<\/p>\n
Her fear is rooted in lived experience, as Duvernay-Smith herself said she experienced homelessness.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI started off living in my car\u2026 I lived in someone\u2019s garage without them knowing\u2026 I lived on someone\u2019s enclosed porch\u2026 I lived in transitional housing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Now, she works within a system she once relied on,\u00a0but that system is undergoing a dramatic shift.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, about 284 LAHSA employees were notified their positions are being eliminated, including 216 union workers represented by SEIU Local 721.<\/p>\n
The layoffs follow a decision by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to pull more than $300 million in funding from LAHSA last year, after a series of audits found the agency\u00a0failed to\u00a0properly track taxpayer dollars.<\/p>\n
Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who led the effort, said in a statement that LAHSA has \u201ctoo often\u00a0operated\u00a0as a \u2018black\u00a0box,\u2019\u201d\u00a0with commissioners, media and funding partners struggling to obtain clear information about staffing and budgets.<\/p>\n
The county is now transitioning services into a newly created, county-run Department of Homeless Services and Housing \u2014 with a focus on increasing transparency, accountability and results.<\/p>\n
Horvath acknowledged the impact on workers, saying the county has launched an accelerated hiring process and an employment concierge service to help displaced employees find new roles.<\/p>\n
At the city level, some leaders are pushing for similar changes.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who sits on the Housing and Homelessness Committee, has called on the city to re-evaluate its financial ties to LAHSA, but said those efforts have so far stalled\u00a0in the committee process.<\/p>\n
\u201cSadly, Mrs. Raman, who chairs the housing and homelessness committee, has sat on my motion to have a plan for us to work our way from LAHSA.\u00a0She\u2019s\u00a0obstructed that from getting scheduled for more than\u00a0520 days,\u201d said Councilmember Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, workers like Duverney-Smith said they feel caught in the middle of decisions they had no role in making.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are not people who are making the decisions that LAHSA is being punished for,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople have children, they have bills\u2026\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0doing it alone.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0already hard. People are already paycheck to paycheck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, as she faces an uncertain future, Duverney-Smith said she\u2019s\u00a0leaning on her faith, her support system and the small routines that help her stay steady\u2014hoping the\u00a0stability\u00a0she worked so hard to build\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0slip away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 What started as a calming daily ritual has taken on new meaning for Tiffany Duverney-Smith.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[26528,111403,5997,7,1011,48,52,51,47,50,49,13,5999,136,5996],"class_list":["post-296402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-anna-albaryan","tag-app-housing","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-california","tag-housing","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-politics","tag-socal-what-you-need-to-know","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}