About three months ago<\/a>, a City Council committee recommended a July 1 deadline to get an analysis on how to move parts of the money away from the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA.<\/p>\n Learn the ins and outs behind L.A.’s housing crisis.<\/p>\n Sign up for Building Your Block, a seven-issue newsletter course from LAist that explains the obstacles around housing development in L.A. and what you can do to make things better.<\/p>\n That work has yet to begin, according to city records and officials. The City Council has not approved starting the analysis nor funding for consultants to prepare it.<\/p>\n The backstory<\/p>\n Back in April, the City Council\u2019s homelessness committee recommended the full council hire a consultant to deliver an analysis by July 1<\/a> on which city programs make sense to start transitioning the city away from the embattled L.A. Homeless Services Authority. The idea was to explore moving homelessness spending oversight away from LAHSA to the county, the city or another entity.<\/p>\n The recommendation came about a year after the L.A. County Board of Supervisors decided to pull county funds from LAHSA<\/a> in the wake of back-to-back scathing audits in 2024<\/a> and March 2025<\/a>, finding LAHSA failed to properly oversee the dollars it was entrusted with. The board’s decision to move the funds to a new homeless services department took effect<\/a> this month.<\/p>\n The city\u2019s analysis is now expected to take much longer. The full City Council has not yet voted on whether to commission the analysis nor budgeted the expected $450,000 to hire a consultant for it.<\/p>\n And the recommended deadline for the analysis was pushed back nearly a year and a half to December 2027 by the most recent council committee to take up the item.<\/p>\n Timeline might change<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Katy Yaroslavsky, the councilmember who chairs the budget committee and suggested the later timeframe, said that deadline is likely to move up to a sooner date.<\/p>\n The idea was to update the deadline after \u201cwe had an idea of the process for hiring a consultant,\u201d said the spokesperson, Leo Daube.<\/p>\n The timeline still needs to come to the full council for approval and is likely to be changed, he said.<\/p>\n Councilmember Nithya Raman, who chairs the homelessness committee and is running for mayor against Karen Bass, told LAist she will try to get the process fast-tracked.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will be working to push up the timeline,\u201d Raman told LAist in a statement. \u201cPreparing for the next step is urgent given the circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n Raman and other City Council members voted in May for a city budget that includes $358 million to LAHSA over the next 12 months, a 5% increase over the prior fiscal year\u2019s $339 million<\/a>. That budget, which 12 of the 15 councilmembers approved, doesn\u2019t require an analysis of shifting dollars that Raman and her committee had recommended.<\/p>\n Raman defended her budget vote.<\/p>\n “As the city does not yet have an alternative system set up to directly manage its own contracts, we must continue to fund our current work,\u201d Raman said in a written statement. \u201cWe have started the process to build that system through [a contract] and are continuing to build our capacity to manage in-house.”<\/p>\n The office of Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson \u2014 which worked with Yaroslavsky on the revised recommendations that included the delayed timeline \u2014 did not respond to phone messages for comment.<\/p>\n A LAHSA Commission meeting April 25, 2025.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n Samanta Helou Hernandez<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n LAist<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n LAHSA is governed by a 10-member commission that is appointed by city and county elected officials who can remove and replace commissioners. Half of the commissioners are appointed by Bass, and half are appointed by each of the five county supervisors. Bass has served on the commission since she appointed herself to it in fall 2023 and is the only elected official on the commission.<\/p>\n Recent council history<\/p>\n Three years ago \u2014 as the homelessness committee was expressing frustration at years of inaccurate and incomplete performance data<\/a> from LAHSA \u2014 a member said the council had failed to examine what alternatives could take over management of the funding.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aWe have to have something in place. And I think what we failed as council is to start talking [through] the questions about what that would mean,\u201d Councilmember John Lee said at the August 2023 meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat would that take place? So that if we were to make that choice, what would we do to put \u2026 in their place?\u201d he added. \u201c\u200aWe need to make sure that we take a look at those options. Otherwise, every year, we’re going to be coming here \u2026 having the same exact conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n Raman, who chaired the committee then, as she does now, responded that she appreciated Lee\u2019s comments. \u201cHopefully we’re not going to be having the same conversation over and over again,\u201d Raman said at the time.<\/p>\n A few months later, in March 2024, Councilmember Monica Rodriguez introduced a motion<\/a> to study what it would take for the city to build capacity to take control of managing city-funded homeless services<\/a>. That report<\/a> went to the council about a year later in April 2024. Almost a year after that, Raman scheduled it for discussion<\/a> at the homelessness committee in March of this year. The committee then decided to recommend an analysis of shifting city funds with the July 1 due date.<\/p>\n Rodriguez told her colleagues they had been wasting precious time and needed to be decisive.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the 316 days since this report was issued, we are finally here engaging in this conversation,\u201d Rodriguez said during public comments<\/a> at the March meeting. She had criticized Raman for not scheduling the discussion sooner.<\/p>\n LAist has asked Raman for her response to that criticism over the past few months. She has not weighed in.<\/p>\n Raman has separately said<\/a> she\u2019s been focused on building the city\u2019s oversight capacity through creating a Bureau of Homelessness Oversight within the city\u2019s housing department, which the City Council voted to establish in May last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n The city has a notoriously long hiring process<\/a>, however, and as of last month, just three of the bureau\u2019s 10 positions had been filled<\/a>.<\/p>\n What the mayor says<\/p>\n As the council\u2019s homelessness committee considered its recommendation this spring, Bass cautioned against shifting funds too quickly from LAHSA without a plan and capacity, issuing a statement<\/a> in March warning that it would harm unhoused people.<\/p>\n L.A. Mayor Karen Bass speaks at a press conference before LAHSA’s annual homeless count Feb. 18, 2025, in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we need is a serious, thoughtful transition plan \u2014 the last thing we need is a new department and more bureaucracy,\u201d she said<\/a> at the time.<\/p>\n The following month, she joined councilmembers Ysabel Jurado and Tim McOsker in a letter <\/a>indicating support for moving away from LAHSA in the long term, while increasing city control of LAHSA in the short term.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the long term, the city must re-envision new systems to handle the responsibilities of homelessness services. We need to explore internalizing LAHSA\u2019s functions,\u201d the letter states. \u201cWithout taking steps to both clarify and assert the role of the city within what is left of LAHSA, we risk continuing to defer critical decisions and accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n How to reach me<\/p>\n If you have a tip, you can reach me on Signal. My username is ngerda.47.<\/p>\n![\"LAHSA-COMMISSION\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783945937_127_.jpeg\")
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