LA Homelessness Governance Meeting Collapses After Two Minutes as City-County Power Struggle Escalates
Los Angeles is a city in Los Angeles County, California. A pivotal meeting that was supposed to decide the future of homelessness governance in the Los Angeles region collapsed about two minutes after it began on the morning of October 9. Organizers failed to accommodate a large crowd, forcing a vote postponement and pushing the city-county power struggle over homelessness services further into the open.
The Los Angeles Continuum of Care general membership meeting was expected to take up a controversial proposal: transferring key administrative functions from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) to Los Angeles County. LAHSA, a joint city-county agency created in 1993, has long coordinated regional homelessness programs and federal funding but has faced years of scrutiny over efficiency and spending.
After the breakdown, Mayor Karen Bass, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Councilmembers Ysabel Jurado, Tim McOsker and Imelda Padilla issued a joint statement criticizing organizers for not planning adequately for a large audience. "Angelenos want a voice in the future of homelessness services, and they were silenced today," the statement said.
The statement went to the heart of the dispute: the city spends hundreds of millions of dollars building housing but lacks sufficient say over who occupies those units. "The 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," the five officials said, calling for shared city-county oversight rather than a county takeover.
The county pushed back in a statement, arguing the city already decides placements into city-funded beds and would continue to do so. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said on October 10 the county had committed to preserving, at minimum, the city's existing access to the database and coordinated-entry system. Meanwhile, the regional system is also fighting HUD in federal court over local control, as the housing department seeks to let providers apply directly to Washington, bypassing the local process.
According to local outlets MyNewsLA (Oct. 9) and Mar Vista Voice (Oct. 10), negotiations continue after the postponed vote — while tens of thousands of Angelenos sleeping on the streets wait for a governance system that actually works.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：洛杉矶市政厅（画面左侧白色高塔）与市中心街景。摄影：Keizers，CC BY-SA 4.0，来源：Wikimedia Commons
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