LOS ANGELES – Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman, Chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee, today urged the LA County Board of Supervisors not to go backwards into a silo and to consider the monumental impacts that creating new bureaucracy would have on daily homelessness efforts that are saving lives and restoring neighborhoods.
View the full letter below:
April 1, 2025
Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration
500 W. Temple Street, Room 383
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Re: Items 18 and 22, proposals for establishment of a county homeless services department; restructuring of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA)
Dear Chair Barger and Honorable Members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors:
By turning away from the old way of doing things over the last two years, we have united the City and the County by delivering a 10% decline in street homelessness in L.A. City – the first decrease in homelessness in many years. While homelessness rises across the country, we are driving it down and have dispelled the myth that people want to live on the streets – saving lives and restoring neighborhoods. We locked arms, each declaring a state of emergency, and have moved with unprecedented urgency. We are making forward movement. We must keep building on this and confronting our challenges, together.
Today as the Board of Supervisors considers going backwards into a silo by dismantling the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority (LAHSA), we ask you to keep in mind how we got here. In the 1980s and 90s there were a series of lawsuits on behalf of unhoused Angelenos alleging that they were restricted from accessing County services. LAHSA was born out of a fragmented City and County system that was siloed and broken. Although it is clear that the Joint Powers Authority has not lived up to its promise, it is also clear that an isolated approach has not worked – and produced even more dire results. Time and time again, when confronting our homelessness crisis, instead of focusing on people, officials focus on infrastructure. In this move of replacing one bureaucracy with another, history repeats itself.
Dismantling LAHSA will deprive the City of Los Angeles of essential resources, including recent voter-approved Measure A funding, and would severely stunt the City’s ability to oversee existing programs that provide holistic solutions to individuals with complex needs. Real people rely on these resources every day and this move puts that life-saving care in jeopardy. This action would create a monumental disruption in the progress we are making and runs the serious risk of worsening our homelessness crisis, not ending it. It will signal a surrender that street homelessness is a permanent fixture in Los Angeles – and as leaders here in the City, we disagree with that assumption.
Instead, we believe that we must work together on this issue. Homelessness is not only a housing issue; it is tied to physical, mental, and behavioral health. The current City County partnership through the Joint Powers Authority of LAHSA is meant to reflect the fact that our jurisdictions have vast overlap, with the significant majority of people experiencing homelessness in the County of Los Angeles residing within the borders of the City of Los Angeles. The only way we can solve homelessness is through an integrated approach - one that aligns homeless services with housing and includes health and social services. This integrated approach inherently requires an enhanced partnership between the City and County.
The Executive Committee for Regional Homelessness Alignment is a crucial tool for driving collaboration, setting shared goals, and ensuring coordinated decision-making. This committee should play a central role in developing a unified strategic plan with measurable goals, improving resource efficiency, and enhancing data transparency across agencies. Clear definitions of LAHSA’s decision-making authority will ensure alignment between the City and County, prevent duplication and enhance accountability. As the City continues to navigate how to respond to the County's potential dismantling of LAHSA, collaboration with the City, and any other entity that may be created, will be necessary to ensure transparent resource allocation, performance evaluations, and public trust in the system is maintained.
The City of Los Angeles represents 60% of Los Angeles County’s homeless population, and we have invested in tens of thousands of shelters and permanent housing units for the homeless – your decision will have an impact that is impossible to overstate. The City must be a full and equal partner in any future decisions that will impact our ability to get people off the streets.
As LAHSA is a Joint Powers Authority, your vote today is not just about transitioning to a new County Department of Homelessness, it is also about the County unilaterally changing how the City and County work together to address homelessness. As you consider this decision, we urge you to keep working with the City to reimagine a homelessness system that truly puts unhoused people first with an eye towards ending the homelessness crisis. We must go forward, not backwards – and we will press on with meaningful and necessary reforms that enhance accountability, improve outcomes, and ultimately end homelessness across our region.
We know that our shared goal at the end of the day is to help people off the street for good. We look forward to continuing that work together.
Sincerely,
KAREN BASS
Mayor
NITHYA RAMAN
Chair, Housing and Homelessness Committee