The city and county have been competing for two other federal responsibilities currently held by LAHSA \u2014 managing a database that tracks unhoused people receiving public services and administering a system used to match people who need help with housing and shelter. <\/p>\n
The local process to select LAHSA\u2019s replacements began after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development suspended the embattled agency from these federal roles in June, citing financial mismanagement. <\/p>\n
Independent reviewers scored the county\u2019s applications higher than the city\u2019s. On Oct. 6, the L.A. Continuum of Care\u2019s 21-member board voted to recommend L.A. County for all four roles. <\/p>\n
The following week, the L.A. City Council instructed its attorneys to explore potential legal challenges to the L.A. Continuum of Care\u2019s selection process while negotiating with L.A. County for shared control of these responsibilities. <\/p>\n
This week, city officials said those negotiations paid off. On Friday, the City Council voted 10-0 to support a tentative agreement with the county on the two remaining federal roles.<\/p>\n
How to participate <\/p>\n
The L.A. Continuum of Care\u2019s general membership meeting is scheduled Monday at 3 p.m<\/a>. The group will vote on whether to approve designating L.A. County for the two federal roles still up for grabs: managing the unhoused database and the housing matching system. <\/p>\n You can attend in person or online via Zoom, and anyone who attends might be eligible to vote. <\/p>\n The L.A. Continuum of Care is a regional planning group required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that chooses which agencies handle the region\u2019s federal homelessness responsibilities. It\u2019s a nebulous body without a fixed roster. It technically includes all \u201cpersons and entities interested in collaborative, solution oriented planning to address homelessness in L.A. County (with the exception of Glendale, Long Beach, and Pasadena),” according to its charter. Anyone who fits that description is allowed to vote. <\/p>\n Because L.A. County is the only candidate under consideration in the vote, county officials encouraged county employees not to vote to avoid potential conflicts of interest, according to an email from the county\u2019s homelessness department. <\/p>\n Attend in-person at 637 Wilshire Boulevard, 1st Floor Commission Room, Los Angeles, CA 90017<\/p>\n Register to attend online here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Worth noting: These are yes-or-no votes. If L.A. County is not approved, no decisions will be made.<\/p>\n How might this change things?<\/p>\n Since 2020, the homeless population has increased by nearly 10% in both the city of L.A. and across L.A. County, according to the official homeless counts.<\/p>\n The region\u2019s homelessness budgets swelled over that same period, with hundreds of millions more spent on shelter beds, housing and services for unhoused Angelenos. Much of that money was available because of local voters who in recent years approved several sales taxes and other measures to fund homeless services. <\/p>\n The decisions getting voted on by L.A. Continuum of Care determine who runs the systems that track and direct that money and who answers to the public when results fall short.<\/p>\n After Monday\u2019s vote, the L.A. Continuum of Care\u2019s selections will go to a federal judge for review on Tuesday. The court will then largely determine when and how the transition away from LAHSA happens in the coming months. <\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear how the shift in control will impact homeless services on the ground. LAHSA leaders and employees have warned that transferring these responsibilities is complex and could take up to a year.<\/p>\n A bitter fight over the best path forward played out ahead of the vote.<\/p>\n L.A. city officials, including Mayor Karen Bass, said they want collaborative governance, and argued giving the county sole authority over federal responsibilities would hurt city residents.<\/p>\n \u201cThe City of Los Angeles provides the overwhelming majority of housing for the region,\u201d Bass and several city council members said in a statement earlier this month. \u201cThe City must be able to help the people on our own streets by placing them into the housing that we build and fund in order to solve the homelessness crisis,\u201d the statement continued.<\/p>\n This month, Bass and a group of L.A. City Council members sent a letter to the L.A. Continuum of Care, arguing that the city\u2019s applications should have scored higher, and urging more support for the city\u2019s bid. <\/p>\n Leaders of the L.A. County Department of Homeless Services and Housing said the county applied for all four functions because it\u2019s best positioned to represent and collaborate with the region’s 85 cities and hundreds of service providers. <\/p>\n Ben Kay, chair of the L.A. Continuum of Care board, wrote to the mayor, City Council and county supervisors on Oct. 14 that the dispute had shifted from \u201ca united front against federal encroachment to splintered infighting.\u201d Kay warned that it could squander the chance to keep local control of these systems and head off further federal involvement. He defended the scoring and selection, saying the board \u201cstands firmly behind the integrity of that process.\u201d<\/p>\n The L.A. City Council held a special meeting on Oct. 14 to discuss the city\u2019s next steps. City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo laid out some options: negotiating with L.A. County for co-leadership of federal roles, separating from L.A. County and forming a city-only continuum of care or potentially filing a lawsuit challenging the whole court-ordered selection process. <\/p>\n After a closed-session discussion, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson announced the council was formally requesting that the L.A. City Attorney\u2019s Office \u201cdevelop options for litigation to protect the city and to protect our constituents, both housed and homeless.\u201d <\/p>\n The council also asked the city administrative officer to keep negotiating with the county. <\/p>\n Those talks produced a tentative agreement, which the council voted to support on Friday.<\/p>\n It covers the two federal roles still up for a vote Monday. If the county is picked to run both, the agreement would give the city a bigger role in each.<\/p>\n For the database, city staff would keep their current access. The city would also get all data in the system on unhoused people within city limits, including those enrolled in county-funded programs, according to the agreement.<\/p>\n Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who chairs the council\u2019s homelessness and health committee, said the city would get the raw data behind the system so it can build its own reports and dashboards. \u201cThat\u2019s something we\u2019ve never had,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n For the matching system, the city funds the vast majority of permanent supportive housing in the city, but it doesn\u2019t currently manage matching for any of those units, Szabo said. LAHSA does. Under the agreement, the county would contract with the city to do that matching in buildings funded by the city or its housing authority.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going from nothing to something, and something substantial,\u201d Jurado said.<\/p>\n The deal isn\u2019t final. Its terms still have to be turned into binding agreements approved by both the City Council and the county Board of Supervisors, according to a report from Szabo\u2019s office.<\/p>\n The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development told the court in an Oct. 20 filing that L.A. County\u2019s homelessness department is an acceptable applicant and that it \u201cprefers\u201d the county over the city. <\/p>\n U.S. District Judge David O. Carter\u2019s court order requires the L.A. Continuum of Care to make its selections by Tuesday. Then, these complex federal responsibilities, supported by scores of LAHSA staff, have to move away from LAHSA on a timeline that will be set by the federal court.<\/p>\n LAHSA workers represented by union SEIU Local 721 have urged both the city and county to protect their jobs during that transition. They argue competent and experienced employees shouldn\u2019t be sidelined because of leadership\u2019s failures. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have spent years building relationships, learning these systems, and helping people move from homelessness into housing,\u201d said Heather Varden, a LAHSA employee who posted an open letter<\/a> from the union. \u201cThat experience should not be thrown away because the name at the top of the contract changes.\u201d<\/p>\n The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA, is losing its federal responsibilities. <\/p>\n How to understand the context\u00a0<\/p>\n City and county officials created the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA, in 1993 as a joint powers authority between the two overlapping jurisdictions. Both the city and county appointed members to LAHSA\u2019s governing commission and relied on the agency to manage public homelessness dollars for the region. <\/p>\n The federal roles were delegated to LAHSA by the L.A. Continuum of Care, an obscure but newly powerful planning group that HUD requires regions across the country to maintain if they want federal money. <\/p>\n Since late 2024, LAHSA has faced a string of critical audits and other scandals, putting its management of L.A.\u2019s growing homelessness crisis under scrutiny. <\/p>\n L.A. County\u2019s Board of Supervisors voted last year to divert more than $300 million in county homelessness funding from LAHSA and manage the funds itself. The county’s new Department of Homeless Services and Housing took control of those funds in July.<\/p>\n On June 11, HUD suspended LAHSA from federal programs, citing alleged failures in financial management, internal controls, grant oversight and conflict-of-interest policies. <\/p>\n The move, according to the Trump administration, meant LAHSA wasn\u2019t able to do the jobs the continuum of care had delegated to it, including applying for $239 million in federal funds on the region\u2019s behalf. <\/p>\n The federal housing department said that with LAHSA suspended, it intended to have L.A. service providers apply directly to HUD for the funds \u2014 a move that would have ignored regional priorities. <\/p>\n LAHSA sued. In August, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter issued a preliminary injunction on LAHSA\u2019s suspension through Oct. 27.<\/p>\n This allowed LAHSA to submit the region\u2019s collaborative application for federal funds by an Oct. 14 deadline. (The agency has since provided notice<\/a> that it has submitted the application on time.)<\/p>\n Carter also ordered the L.A. Continuum of Care to start taking applications to consider replacing LAHSA as soon as possible. The group hired consultants and ran an application process<\/a> over about a month, beginning on Sept. 11. LAHSA leadership decided the agency would not compete in it. <\/p>\n L.A. County applied for all four federal roles and was the only applicant considered for two of them. The city applied for and competed against the county for the other two. <\/p>\n A panel of reviewers (whose identities were kept private) scored<\/a> written applications and interview responses for each of the federal roles up for grabs. L.A. County\u2019s pitch to operate a key database, known as HMIS, used to track service participants through the system earned a score of about 87 out of 100, compared to the city\u2019s score of about 82. On Oct. 6, a committee focused on the database voted 8-0 in favor of the county\u2019s application. Later that day, the board voted 10-4 to pick L.A. County for that role. <\/p>\n The county scored about 91 on its application to manage the system that matches unhoused people with available shelter and other resources \u2014 known as the Coordinated Entry System or CES \u2014 compared to the city\u2019s score of about 73. The board voted 12-1 to select the county to run CES. <\/p>\n A 21-member board speaks for the L.A. Continuum of Care and guides decision-making. That board voted Oct. 6 to recommend L.A. County for all four federal roles currently held by LAHSA. Bass and several city council members had been urging people to attend the upcoming meeting and vote against the L.A. Continuum of Care board\u2019s recommendations and in favor of the city. <\/p>\n Reba Stevens, a community advocate who serves on the 21-member L.A. Continuum of Care board, reviews materials in October 2026. <\/p>\n How does the Continuum of Care operate? <\/p>\n Communities like L.A. must form and operate a \u201ccontinuum of care\u201d if they want federal homelessness money. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, introduced the model in 1994 to promote communitywide collaboration toward ending homelessness. Congress wrote it into law in the 2009 HEARTH Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n The L.A. Continuum of Care is the largest in the U.S. \u2014 covering all of L.A. County, except Long Beach, Pasadena and Glendale, which each run their own.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792977130_93_.jpeg\")
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