Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Los Angeles County is creating its own Department of Homeless Services – and pulling hundreds of people and hundreds of millions of dollars out of LAHSA – the joint city-county homelessness services agency.

Is it a big and long overdue step to maximize taxpayer investments in solving homelessness? Or is it a rushed and divisive move that threatens recent progress in bringing our unhoused neighbors indoors?

We’ll discuss that with Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and with Los Angeles City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield – on this episode of What’s Next, Los Angeles?

Some Great Links

This week's LA Podcast with me, Alissa Walker, Hayes Davenport and special guest co-host . . . Carla Hall, who just left her gig as the last member of the editorial board at the LA Times.

LA Times: County supervisors create new homeless agency, despite warnings from L.A. mayor

LAist: Head of LA homeless services resigns days after county votes to pull $350M from troubled agency

LA Public Press: Unhoused LA residents react to LAHSA’s unraveling

LA Times: Feds to look into potential fraud and corruption in Southern California homeless funds

What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Los Angeles County is creating its own Department of Homeless Services and pulling hundreds of people and hundreds of millions of dollars out of Lhasa, the joint City County Homelessness Services Agency. Is it a big and long-overdue step to maximize taxpayer investments in solving homelessness? Or is it a rushed and divisive move that threatens recent progress in bringing our unhoused neighbors indoors? We'll discuss that with Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath and with Los Angeles City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield on this episode of What's Next, Los Angeles. Hi everyone and welcome. It's Mike Bonin. Thank you for joining me. This is a decidedly wonky and a really important story. On the surface, it's about bureaucracy, politics, and money. But at its heart, it's about how the city and county government are addressing, or failing to address, the gruesome humanitarian crisis on our streets,

Background

SPEAKER_01 1:08

where tens of thousands of people live, and where seven unhoused people die every single day. Past the acronyms and beyond the political intrigue, this is a story about people, about human suffering, and about whether we are capable of alleviating it. To contextualize our discussion, you need to know this. We are not going to make significant progress on homelessness without the County of Los Angeles doing its part, and without the city of Los Angeles doing its part, and without the two entities and their various agencies working strategically and cooperatively to dramatically oversimplify things, the city should be building and providing housing. And the county should be providing the range of services needed to help people when they are housed. And ideally, the city and the county would be working together like that, not just to house people when they become homeless, but to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place. So here's the backstory on this political drama. Historically, getting the county of Los Angeles and the city of Los Angeles to work together has been an immense challenge. For the past several decades, it has often felt like the county and the city were enemies, or maybe at best, long-standing rivals, nursing grudges, and acting either aggressively or passively aggressively towards one another. It has not been a healthy or productive dynamic. Things got so bad in 1991 that the city of Los Angeles sued the county, claiming it was failing to do its part to address homelessness. The two parties settled the lawsuit in 1993 by forming LASSA, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. It is the lead agency for spending federal money in Los Angeles for homelessness, and it executes and oversees contracts with service providers, and it coordinates and manages federal, state, county, and city funds for programs providing shelter, housing, and services to people experiencing homelessness. It is currently funded about 30% from the city of Los Angeles and about 35% from the County of Los Angeles. Now, here's something to keep in mind. Lhasa does not have the power to build or to provide housing or to choose which services to provide or to decide which programs to implement. The city and the county, which provide the bulk of the money, call the shots. That dynamic has made Lhasa a convenient scapegoat, a largely faceless bureaucracy that elected officials can blame for the homelessness crisis. Now, for a long time, Lhasa did not have a lot of funds, did not have a lot of staff or a lot of programs. That changed a lot over the past decade as the city and the county both dramatically stepped up efforts to address homelessness and to create large dedicated funding sources to do so. In the span of a few short years, Lhasa's size, mission, and budget grew dramatically, and predictively, problems ensued. When Mayor Karen Bass took office at the end of 2022, it seemed like an era of partnership and goodwill was beginning between the city and the county. Officials from both sides pledged to work together, they publicly praised one another, and they launched similar programs to help move people indoors from encampments. A photo of Mayor Bass and the county supervisors standing together, arm in arm, was a visual illustration of the mayor's mantra that locking arms was the key to progress. Shortly after the mayor took office, the city and the county agreed to hire respected nonprofit leader, Dr. Valeria Adams Kellum, as executive director of Lhasa, and she was given a mandate to overhaul the agency. The past two years have seen dramatic ups and downs on homelessness. The mayor's relationships helped secure state and federal funds, and for the first time in several years, homelessness decreased slightly. And unsheltered homelessness went down even more noticeably. But the progress was not coming fast enough or big enough for many people, including large segments of the public and some elected officials. And then withering audits slammed Lhasa, saying it was mismanaging contracts and failing to track spending or to even measure success. Officials at both the city and the county began talking about pulling out or overhauling Lhasa. Officials at both the city and the county began talking about pulling out of Lhasa or dramatically overhauling the agency. Now all of this was playing out as Lhasa was scheduled to get a huge infusion of cash. Last fall, voters approved Measure A. It's a sales tax increase expected to generate over one billion a year for homelessness. County officials led by Supervisor Lindsay Horvath began making the case that Lhasa should not be entrusted with the funds, and that the Board of Supervisors should instead create a consolidated county department of homelessness. Horvath's idea gained traction quickly, and last week she and a majority of her colleagues voted to form the new county agency by July of next year. In doing so, they would move 450 million and 700 people from Lhasa to the new agency. Supervisor Holly Mitchell abstained from the vote, warning the county was moving too fast and without thinking through the details of the transition. It is fair to say that the reaction to the Horvath proposal at City Hall was somewhere between grave concern and freaking out. Mayor Bass publicly called on the board to slow down and work more closely with the city. Five council members, a full third of the council, many representing overlapping districts with Horvath, showed up to deliver the same message. It didn't slow things down at all. The fallout was swift, with city officials condemning the decision and worrying that it would have a significant negative impact on the fight against homelessness in the city. And late Friday, Adams Kellum, the Lhasa director, announced she was resigning from the soon-to-be-getted agency. Councilmember Bob Blumenfield told me in the second interview in today's podcast that he felt litigation between the city and the county was now pretty inevitable. It sure feels a lot more like the grim days of the 90s when Lhasa was formed out of a lawsuit than it does like the heady days of 2023 when everybody was locking arms. So to get into this, I spoke with a couple of the principals. First up is Supervisor Horvath, who led the effort to create the new county department, and who is the focus of most of the behind-the-scenes grumbling and discontent from city officials. Horvath, who was elected in 2022, represents two million people in a district that stretches from the Ventura County line down to Venice and Santa Monica and over to Hollywood, Silmar, and San Fernando. She and I spoke Saturday morning. All right, Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, thanks for joining me.

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath

SPEAKER_02 8:12

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

So uh big news this week. Uh it's certainly been the subject of a lot of discussion. Let me give you an opportunity to start uh to frame the issue. Um tell us from your perspective what you did and why.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Uh so we uh brought forward a motion that does two primary things. The first thing is um consolidating the work of the county, which uh currently exists across something like 14 different departments as it relates to the issue of homelessness. Serv homeless services are exist in many different departments. And uh this motion directed that that work would be consolidated under one umbrella, one department, one director for easier accountability, transparency, and accessibility of services. And um and then the second piece of it is that uh we would scale back the role of LASA and making sure that they're able to focus on what the original intention was of Lhasa and take the dollars that were um injected into LASA's work from the ballot measures that have passed, measure A and prior measure H, and uh and invest those dollars instead in uh in this department, which will continue to uh provide services, which will continue to connect people to the things that they need. And this is really uh the result of a variety of things. First and foremost, um, it was direction from the Blue Ribbon Commission on Homelessness that the county convened before my time on the board, but had directed years ago that this uh these were both moves that needed to happen for people to have a better understanding of how public dollars were being used in this space. It's a result of uh audits that have come forward, two from the county and one more recently from the Alliance, the ongoing Alliance um court case, which has surfaced many issues in the system. And it also uh resulted from my personal experience uh working in this system when I uh before I was elected, it was the number one issue that people were talking to me about. It's the thing I most wanted to fix, as I know the mayor uh felt the same way. And when I came in as a result, I put myself at every table that exists on this subject. And unfortunately, there are many. And I think all of that uh sort of being uh stretched across different agencies, different departments, and different places has made it incredibly challenging for this system to be successful in its ultimate mission, which is helping people get off the streets, get into housing, and be supported with the services that they deserve that helps keep them in housing and most importantly, keep them safe and healthy. And so the cornerstone of the department that we are creating is a county's program called Housing for Health, which um uh which is more than a decade old. It actually has an amazing track record, the best success rate of any program in the county. And uh it is a gold standard uh as told to me by service providers. It is a gold standard as told to me by people who have lived through the system and received the services, provide outstanding feedback on what uh what the system actually is and how it has served them. And I think that's that's most important that we are investing in something that actually um delivers the support and services that people need and that people expect to be funded uh through the ballot measures that they've invested in and obviously through the dollars that uh that exist inside our governments.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

I I want to come back to Housing for Health in a few minutes because I'm a a huge fan of Housing for Health and I'd love to shed some more light on that. Um but first I want to ask, it's been reported that the the move will uh of the consolidating at the county and the moving resources out of Lhasa will uh by July 2026 take 348 million out of Lhasa over to the county uh and uh 400 and something odd staff members. Those numbers correct, and where does that leave Lhasa?

SPEAKER_02 12:34

So we're doing final assessments because um obviously Lhasa existed before Measure H ever was passed. There was work that the city and county were doing together with funding streams that existed before the ballot measure dollars. So um, so we are accounting for exactly what that continued relationship will look like, what sort of investments need to be made for it to be the continuum of care, uh, which receives federal funding or it has. We'll see if that continues. Um uh, but also the point and time count and the HMIS system operator, um, you know, those continued functions obviously require investment and that commitment remains. Um, what we're doing is taking the um the um ballot measure dollars that were in addition to all of that work, and instead of just giving them to Lhasa, um, giving and you know, we've seen that I think uh the infrastructure that I think uh people want to see, I personally want to see in terms of find fiscal oversight and how we can just speak to how those dollars are being spent to make sure they're being spent equitably, that they uh, you know, are invested in communities throughout our region, um, you know, that we have that kind of oversight uh from the outset in the county. Our auditor controller is working with Housing for Health to make sure that uh infrastructure will be stood up. And um, but there there will continue to be a relationship. Um, it, you know, loss is the result of a court settlement. And so it will continue to exist uh for that purpose so long as the county and city want it to exist. But I think what's not happening anymore is, you know, deciding that the dollars that voters entrusted to us to use uh to better address the homelessness services system, we can't keep doing the same thing. And I think investing them in a place that doesn't have the kind of fiscal oversight that multiple audits have surfaced, uh, we we truly need. Um, we're we're gonna make that change. But when those dollars come to the county, the county is the city, as well as all of 87 other cities plus the unincorporated areas. So they're going to continue to be invested in the city of Los Angeles as well as every other city and uh and the unincorporated areas.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

I I would characterize the the city reaction to this as uh uh somewhere on the freakout scale. Um you you know, you got the letter from the mayor and councilwoman Raman urging uh uh slow down on this. You had a bunch of uh council members coming to the board. Uh the city seems really concerned about this. Do you do you um do you have a sense of of why that is? Do you do you get that?

SPEAKER_02 15:11

I definitely appreciate that the city is concerned. I know that they have budget concerns, and um that that was really highlighted in Councilmember Yaroslavsky's comments. You know, I know that she's the new budget chair, so they're really concerned between the impact of the fires and everything else. I, you know, their fiscal challenges have been well established, and so I know that's a significant contributor. I spoke directly with Councilmember Raman before the meeting where she expressed um, you know, that uh city bureaucracy doesn't change quickly. Um, and she thought that a year wasn't enough time for that transition to happen. And I understand that being inside a very large government as well. Um, but I think what people who are out in the community feel is a sense of urgency and the idea that this is taking a year, um, that this would this this transition wouldn't be complete until July of next year, from my vantage point, and I think from the vantage point of a lot of folks, feels like way too long. And so, you know, it's really within our responsibility, not just our ability, but our responsibility to make sure that we're doing the right thing, especially as measure A dollars just kicked in April 1st. And um, you know, we have a new ballot measure that says people not only want to invest in services, but also housing and make sure that those dollars are spent um with accountability, think that was a key component of the success of the measure. You know, I really took that to heart. As I know each council member has taken on the issue. Um, and so, you know, I know that they are concerned and uh we are concerned as a county that ultimately these dollars that came in through the ballot measure are county dollars. If they continue to be misspent, there will be outside forces who come in to enforce on how they are spent. And I don't know why we wouldn't take that responsibility ourselves and make sure that the dollars are staying in our system, under our control, and used to the best of our ability. That's what the voters wanted. And I think that's what we need to step up and do. Um and every change comes with concern, uh, but we also have to make sure that we are actively communicating with each other while we stand up what will be a new and I believe more efficient system.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

So uh the the city obviously has, I think, heard all that, but but but folks are still sort of freaked out. It it's felt it feels like when the the council members come to the board and say, please slow down, and that doesn't happen, that sort of the the era of uh uh locking arms uh seems to be um uh uh falling apart. Um you your email this morning, Saturday morning, talked about turning the page on the status quo. Some people have said you know the the emerging dynamics between the city and the county, some of the tension coming out in Judge Carter's courtroom, some of it coming out over this, uh says that we may be turning the page on the current status quo, but are we going back to the status quo of the city and the county feuding that led to the formation of Lhasa in the first place? How do you feel?

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Not for my part. I think that, you know, we have a responsibility uh to the public in terms of how we are stewards of the dollars. But, you know, I don't know any of my colleagues on the board of supervisors or on the Lhasa Commission that have called every city council member and scheduled meetings to have those active conversations, offered their staff to work with them directly. Um, you know, while I served on the Lhasa Commission, I remember, I recall one uh one moment in particular where um we were authorizing funding that was being spent through uh city council members' discretionary funds, which I know are the most precious of all of the dollars that you had have as a city council member. Um, you know, they were using those dollars to be spent in a way that if they worked with the county and the county spent the dollars, we could have gotten a Medi-Cal reimbursement and they could have saved them. And I searched that at the commission meeting, and the mayor said, Oh, thank you for bringing that to my attention. And, you know, we sort of had a side conversation where she expressed, you know, the city doesn't really always understand how the county works or how they can work with the county. And I think that's the issue. It's not um after this many years of of living in the crisis that we have had on homelessness, the fact that leaders who are in charge of these dollars still don't know the best way to make the most efficient use of dollars is really not okay. And I think that we have to make sure that as we are having these conversations, I know people are frustrated and they just want to change, you know, what's happening in in on their streets and in their communities as quickly as possible. But I think we also have a responsibility to make sure that as we're doing it, we stand up a structure that uses those dollars so they go farther. Having one department inside the county, and I'm just gonna speak on the county side because that's the primary motivator of promotion. To have one department means we're able to consolidate administration so we can stretch those dollars to go farther and be spent more on services and not on overhead. This is hard work, but this is the change that's necessary. And now we are going to invest in the infrastructure on the county side and make sure that it serves the entire region as it should have long ago in terms of how those dollars are administered. And I get that that doesn't make people's frustrations go away. People are frustrated about a lot of things right now. But what will make what will make frustration go away is working together in the how we establish that new structure and making sure that we're investing those dollars and things that actually work and deliver the results that everyone wants to see.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

So over the past few years, the city has stepped in and done things that the city traditionally has not done. It's done some mental health stuff, it's done more service stuff with some of its discretionary money. Um what would you like to see the division of labor be on homelessness between the county and the city? Who should be doing what?

SPEAKER_02 21:19

Well, the county should be provide should be the primary source for service provision, and the city should be the primary source of housing. And I think this has also been a fundamental tension I've heard from my city council colleagues in Los Angeles and other cities, to be honest, um, about you know, whether the county is sufficiently providing services that they wanna see. And I think what we saw with Measure H, um, which was absolutely necessary, I wanna say that for the record as well, that Measure H was a fundamental change to how we treat people on the streets, that they are not forgotten until they get into housing, that they are served even if they are on the street. And I understand the motivation behind that. And what happened is not investing in housing meant they continued to stay on the street and get that care on the street instead of getting into housing, which also needs to be a primary component of getting people healthy and safe. And so, you know, Measure H was critical, but at that time we also needed to, you know, build out the infrastructure that would help people, you know, move in a direction that is actually helping to solve the problem. And that's where Housing for Health comes in. It's a program that was designed by the county, as I said, more than a decade ago. And it it wraps people with services. It matches them with the mental health care, with addiction recovery, with that, whatever, whatever the issues are that compound the struggle of homelessness. It you treats the person and centers the person in the experience and makes sure that we're not treating people as a one size fits all. There are different housing solution needs and service solution needs for different people. And that program has developed in such a way where it's able to be innovative and flexible and responsive to what people need. And I think that's uh that's why I want to see that be the cornerstone of the work that the county is doing. And then that allows the cities, especially now that they have their own respective allocations of funding from Measure A, uh, both on the service side and on the housing side, to focus on how do they stand up housing solutions that we can match with services, and how do we make sure that those services are appropriately supported. And there are some things that the county should uniquely do, like mental health services and support. We have a department of mental health, um, but there are also things that come with you know operating a housing facility like janitorial services that are not unique to something that the county does. And so really figuring out what that division of labor is, who's responsible for what, and how we make sure that that funding is appropriately spent so that so a city isn't just frustrated that something isn't happening, so they start to you know invest in mental health or something else. You know, obviously if cities want to do that, they can. But in an ideal world, that service provision should be led by the county and standing up housing should be led by cities.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

So if the the city builds permanent supportive housing, uh, is it automatic that the county will provide the services?

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Well, I think that's what the goal has been. And I think uh that's what we need to really figure out as we are moving forward. How do we make sure that that is the ultimate outcome? Because we've seen, and I think people have been frustrated, you know, with housing a housing first model in some cases. Some for some people it's great, but for others, we know that it's not enough, that they need a lot more hands-on support, and it's difficult to stabilize an environment when you have somebody who needs a lot more sophisticated care not getting it in a housing environment.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

So, how do we make sure that we're standing up all the different kinds of housing solutions that we need in a community in partnership with our cities and make sure that when they do it, that the service provision is actually happening. And um, and and I think that there have been legitimate frustrations on both sides. We've seen, you know, in evaluating the county's, you know, counterpart to inside safe, it's called Pathway Home. Um, when the county built it out, uh, we required that you sort of saw a pathway all the way to that final permanent housing solution. And um, and what we have seen is that the county's program has been stifled in its ability to expand largely because of lack of availability of housing solutions. So we need help on seeing housing, permanent housing solutions stood up in in all of the communities that we serve. And uh, and if we had more of a partnership in that way, I think we would see a lot more success. It's no secret that the that we are severely under-resourced in terms of the housing uh needs that people have in Los Angeles, not just in terms of units, but also in terms of affordability. So we have a lot of work to do in that regard.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

You you mentioned housing first and people's frustrations with it a second ago. I just want to clarify were were you suggesting that um uh you would like to see cities, other jurisdictions do models other than or in addition to housing first, or that the county or the county needs to do a better job providing the services to make housing first work?

SPEAKER_02 26:38

I think it's I mean, I think it's all of the above. I, you know, there are some people for whom, if they just were able to get into a new housing unit, you know, they were evicted from uh a building that somebody was selling the building to tear it down and do whatever, you know, they need a housing solution. And another frustration that I have had that um has become incredibly clear to me is the fact that every service, even getting access to a new housing unit, is gatekeeped by service provision, as opposed to there just being a platform where, okay, I lot I'm about to be evicted by my landlord because my building is being sold. What are my temporary housing solutions while I figure out, you know, there is no website where someone can go and say, here's where a bed is available for me tonight, you know. And I know that there are uh there are many people who have co-occur uh co-occurring issues that this this concept would not apply to them. But there are people, if you gave them the opportunity to self-manage their own situation, they could. And we are also gatekeeping that opportunity, and that is unacceptable. So I think there's a lot more that we have to do. Um, you know, and I raised that frustration several times at Lhasa. Like, how are we not creating a portal where people can just go and see where things are available to them? And how are we not thinking about once they enter the system once that we uh that we identify what other services are available to them based on, you know, what whatever they're eligible for? Why are we making people go to six or seven different places to get all of the support that they need? It's unconscionable and that makes people frustrated. You know, it makes us frustrated when we direct that all of these services be provided. It makes, you know, the people who are investing our public who are spending their dollars to make the system work better makes them frustrated that we're not doing a better job. So we just have to do the intentional work to make it work better. And I do believe, you know, despite the frustration that people have, I do believe that interest exists on all sides of this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

One of my pet peeves, you just you just hit on it, is uh the the lack of agency that we allow unhoused people to have in their own transition off the street. My the thing I always said is I have an app with UCLA healthcare where I can see my test results, I can see, you know, do they have my medications right? We don't give unhoused people the opportunity to do that, to look and say, oh my God, they don't even realize I'm a vet. I can be getting VA services. And that's a huge gap.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's frustrating. And, you know, this idea that we know best, I mean, in some cases, there are people who are not aware of how sick they are and we need to help them. But there are other people for whom if we give gave them just a little bit more opportunity, they would be able to help themselves. And uh, and I think that that's ultimately what we hope, you know, is the case for so many people.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

One of the things you said that I I love is the fact that that not everybody needs a permanent supportive housing wraparound services. Some people, a short-term rental subsidy for six months, maybe all they need to get back on their feet. And we don't have we don't have a good pipeline for that.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

And that would even be cheaper than a lot of the things that we're doing, too. If if you don't care about people, which is horrible, but if you don't and you just care about how public dollars are being spent, then think about it in that perspective. It is so much more cost effective to help people stay in the housing that they're in than anything else.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

And and if you don't do that, you're telling people we're not gonna help you until you're chronically homeless, which is much harder and much more expensive.

SPEAKER_02 30:18

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Um when you were talking about um uh housing first and frustration with it, the the the example we're discussing right now about a short-term rental subsidy or sort of low barrier entry uh is is a good counterpoint. I just want to be clear, were you suggesting that you're also open to sort of um uh the sobriety first model?

SPEAKER_02 30:45

Well, I don't know that we can um I don't know that we can do that um for a variety of reasons that I know you know well, and we have talked about, you know, I I think that what we need to do is show up and meet people where they are in in how we need to provide those services. And I I think that's why Housing for Health has been so successful is it, you know, it really helps to assess where what people's needs are and what the challenges are that contribute to their experience of homelessness and uh and address them from a place of trying to help people be healthy, not trying to fix them. And I think um, and uh and more importantly, not try to punish them for things that they're struggling with either. I think the idea that you know everybody who's you know struggling with these issues out on the streets needs to go to jail first is is not absolutely not a solution that I support. It's not a system that I want to uh that's not the system I want to invest in. I want to support an an investment in care. And that I believe is the cornerstone of housing for health. It's literally its name. And I think that's why we need to invest in in a program like that that works, that centers the experience of the individual person and meets them where they are in that work.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

I want to do a whole episode on housing for health because it's it's I hope you do because I think people don't really understand it. They they don't.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

They feel they might feel better. I don't want to tell people how to feel or what they think, but I do think that if they understood housing for health more, I think this would be an easier transition for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

It it's a great model. Definitely want to get deeper into housing for health on a future episode. Uh it it's such a a great thing to do. Um, but um the you know, the the transition getting there uh could be bumpy. Uh when I spoke to Bob Blumenfield, he said, you know, I think this is gonna wind up in more litigation. Friday afternoon, Valcia Adams resigned as ED of Los Angeles Housing Services Authority. Uh, are you concerned about what the transition is going to look like?

SPEAKER_02 32:48

I think that we are focused on how do we set up a department that actually and a system that actually works. Of course, I'm concerned when people are upset. Um, and I think that change requires us to have difficult conversations that might not always be pleasant, but hopefully can be productive. And I think that people should share their frustrations that they've had, but do so in a way where we're actually making progress on standing up a system that's going to work better. I would love to hear how people would like to see this stood up. I get that every elected official has their own vision. And I and I really got that when I made those phone calls that I referenced earlier because each individual council member and each supervisor had a different idea of how they wanted dollars spent in their district, how they wanted to see different things done. Some city council members wanted Loss of funding to be to pay for their staff. So they had an outreach team. Some people, I mean, it was just there was a whole range of experience. Some, you know, required that you had to prove that you were somebody who was housed in a district for uh, you know, six months or something before you were ever eligible. And not even having that consistency in one city on how on how dollars were being used also made it challenging. It makes it challenging for LASA staff as well. I want to be very clear. This is not a personal attack on anyone. And I know that it's impossible for that to really land with people because it's change that's hard. Uh, but my my observation is that the system is fundamentally broken. I think we see it in our communities, and I think I saw it up close on you know, trying to be on the inside and make that change.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Last question. Um, and it's about you, really, not so much the particular issue. Um, you're definitely earning a reputation as uh uh uh an activist uh uh legislator, as somebody uh who's really pushing for big things. There's two schools of thought that I've heard. One is wow, Lindsay is amazing. She's swinging for the fences. I love the impatience. It's about time somebody's doing these things. And I'm sure you love that school of thought. The other school of thought is man, love the direction, but it feels like on governance reform and on on on Laglassa stuff, there's a lot of details that aren't being thought out in advance. How do you respond to that second school of thought?

SPEAKER_02 35:20

Well, I, you know, I've only been in local government my whole life. So I know when people come from other levels of government, there are different ways you arrive at your outcomes. You know, there are committee work at the state and federal levels that happen that, you know, sort of bake legislation with a lot more detail by the time it ultimately gets decided. You know, my experience working in local government, if you want to make a change, you don't get to decide that as just one person. And this whole systems don't respond to you until there's sort of that collective direction. And especially in the county where we don't have a singular executive in terms of how our governance is structured right now, I have routinely heard from department directors that, you know, do you think you have three votes for that? So uh, so my my vantage point is we have to decide if we're ready to make change. And I believe that we are. I think even people who are concerned about what change will mean know that the status quo isn't delivering what's best. Um, and so then creating a process that maps out how we have time and how we work together so we bring people into that work is the way that I know how to do this work. And I, you know, we didn't bake a lot of the details, for example, on Measure G that will come from that from uh the governance reform task force that is going to be sat by this June. And I hope people get involved in that work because we wanted there to be an active opportunity for people to be a part of it, but we didn't want to see people meet for years, make suggestions for change like we saw in other governments that never saw the light of day. It's like you spend all of this time and invest so much of yourself and have hope for change, and then it doesn't happen, that's even more defeating. And I think more, you know, even more so erodes trust. And the way that we are approaching change, we know that change will happen. And we invite you into that process on how to do it. And, you know, if we decide, if we get to July 1 of next year and not all of the details are baked, it's not like we're gonna say, nope, sorry, July 1, we're done. You know, we have to, we have to have, you know, some grace with each other. But I do think that if we don't put deadlines on things and if we don't commit to making that change happen, I think we have seen that institutional inertia takes over. It frustrates those of us who come into this work saying we want to bring change. I've seen so many change agents, yourself included, come to come into the work of government wanting to do so many things and get frustrated by how long it takes, you know, the bureaucracy, the process, all of it. And sometimes those steps are necessary for good government, but sometimes they are the problem. And we have to be honest with ourselves about that. Otherwise, we're going to have change happen to us. And I don't want that to happen.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

All right. Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, thanks for joining me.

SPEAKER_02 38:12

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

Before we move to the next interview, a program. If you're interested in today's topic,

Some Program Notes

SPEAKER_01 38:24

be sure to listen to this week's episode of our sister podcast, LA Podcast. On the episode released yesterday, Alyssa Walker, Hayes Davenport, and I are joined by Carla Hall, who just left her post writing editorials about homelessness for the LA Times. We talk about various aspects of homelessness, including the county decision and the fallout from it. And Carla talks with us about what it's been like at the LA Times during the past dramatic and crazy few months. That's on LA Podcast. If you need a fix of commentary and analysis and discussion of local public affairs, we drop a new episode every Monday. Also, you may have heard the news that starting next month, I will become the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State, LA. I'll have more to say about that in a future episode, but for now, let me just say this is going to mean I will be doing even more work on public affairs programming, not less. And my work on LA Podcast and what's next, Los Angeles, will continue. Next up is my interview with Councilmember Bob Blumenfield.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Councilmember Blumenfield was one of the five council members who testified at the Board of Supervisors meeting last week. I served with Bob for nine years and we were seatmates in Council Chambers. He's thoughtful and deliberative with a sharp eye for detail, and a big frustration with government actions he feels are not adequately thought through. We spoke on Friday night just after Adams Kellum announced her resignation. All right, Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, welcome to What's Next Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

I'm happy to be here, Mike. It's always good to see you and hear you.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

To start, I just want to level set because the the issue of Lhasa and the county funding is controversial, and it's very easy to sort of pivot into a perception that the people on the county side are anti-Lhasa and the people on the city side are pro-Lhasa or defending Lhasa. It's a lot more nuanced and complicated than that. So let me let me just start out by asking you um what your your feeling is towards Lhasa as an agency and its problems.

SPEAKER_00 40:31

Well, I've been raising red flags about Lhasa for a long time. And that's no secret. I've had uh lots of concerns with the data that we've been getting, lots of concerns uh for many years. And as you and I have talked, I think actually Dr. Adam Adams Keldon was the best CEO that they've had, but but even she has not been able to turn them around. I mean, they they have they've grown so fast. Uh the culture uh over there is is is not is not only not ideal, it's is very problematic uh in terms of not being able to share and and think and having one way that they do things and not being very flexible. Um and it's been it's been way too opaque and there's there's it's been way too complex. It's very hard to understand how decisions are made. Uh and oftentimes when you try to get to the bottom of something, as I've done many, many times, you get people pointing fingers in different directions. Now, all that being said, uh I have grave concerns about the the way that the county is is going about this uh in terms of just yanking their funds without really consulting with the city. And I'm very worried they're basically going to uh grab the best people out of Lhasa and leave a shell of an organization there uh and leave the the city in a very difficult and uh damaged spot vis-a-vis homelessness. So um I have concerns with the with the the way that they've gone about it, uh, but it it's not I I'm certainly not in a position to be defending Lhasa when I've been raising red flags about Lhasa and about uh a lot of the ways that the money is being spent for a very long time.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

That that's really why you're such a perfect person to talk to about this, because you you really think through the the details of things. So I want to get your sense of you know, a little bit more specifically than we just spoke about, what is bad about what the county is doing and the pace it's doing it.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

Well, I mean, this is an organization that serves the city and the county, and and to some extent all the other cities in the uh in the county, although the it's really just the city of Los Angeles and the county that pay all funds. In fact, the the county provides 40% of the funding, the city provides 35% of the funding, uh, and you know, state about 17%, federal about 8%. Um so when you yank out 40% of the funding, um you know, you decimate the organization's ability to be able to do the contracting that it needs to do. Uh, you know, that's its primary mission with the service providers. So that that's a a you know grave thing. And also you you you you completely destabilize the the governance structure. There's a there's a lot of uh governance questions that are uh inextricably linked with the organization and that are based on the funding levels. So it's it it's all out of kilter. Uh it it can be done, but it's just you know it's uh it's being done in in a very uh uh quick and dirty and uh you know dramatic way when it it probably should be done much more strategically and surgically.

SPEAKER_01 43:47

So a after the county pulls out its three hundred and forty eight or three hundred and fifty million or so, which they're talking about doing by July of twenty twenty six, then the city is the is the is the big dog financially. big contributor to Lhasa. You're saying that that the county would still have the same level of oversight on the the Lhasa Commission?

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Well I I I I think that's got to change. You know, as a council person and as a representative of the city, there's no way we're going to let that continue that way. Right? We we cannot have the county making the decisions when the city's putting in all of the all the funding. The city is going to have to figure out a a different structure as well because the city's funds can't maintain uh Lhasa the way Lhasa has been without the without the without for when 40% of the the funding is being yanked. Not to mention some of that state and federal funding, which is the, you know, the eight you know the 25% roughly of state and federal funds, some of that funding is going to is is matching money is going to follow the county dollars as well. So we're not going to be left with all the federal and state funding sitting in Lhasa. That's that's also going to be removed. I mean on the positive side though, I mean my hope is that at the end of the day we'll have a clear lines of responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

Because because part of the problem with homelessness in general in the city of in the in the Los Angeles region is that the roles and responsibilities are not clearly delineated. And thus the accountability is also not uh is diffused. And you know specifically the most important issues such as the services for drug addiction and mental health you know when you look at the uh code the the the the welfare code it fall it squarely falls in the county's lap.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

You know it is it is the responsibility of the county not the city. But the city has taken on that role because the county was failing to do so. And the city has taken on a lot of those types of services and it it years ago this is why Lhasa was created years ago uh the city sued the county because the county was not meeting its obligations under the welfare code. And part of a solution to that lawsuit was the creation of Lhasa as a way for them to meet those obligations in in better partnership with the city. Well when you pull out of Lhasa you also in essence pull out of the what that settlement agreement and we're we're back to square one where the city is not satisfied with the county and the county's ability or or not ability but the county's uh you know take the county's taking on its responsibility when it comes to human services uh roles and and healthcare and mental illness so you know I wouldn't be surprised if we end up back in a lawsuit. Oh man I mean I I I actually I don't see any other way around it to be honest. I mean I hope there's another way around it but I but you know we have to get the we the Angelinos need those services and they have not been getting them before Loss was created and frankly they really have not been getting them even after loss has been created.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

And just creating county bureaucracy is is not going to uh is not going to solve that automatically yeah I'm sure uh let me break that up in into a couple different pieces because uh the the there's a lot there I mean the the best case scenario I guess is uh you know the the responsibilities are delineated and the city is very clearly the the brick and mortar and the counter is very clearly the county is very clearly the the the services that would that that would be a a positive outcome but and and the county agrees to take on those services when the city builds something because as you know part of the problem is we build interim housing for example yep and then the county says well that's great but we didn't tell you to do that so we're not going to pay for the services exactly um yeah and then and then it creates a perverse incentive for cities city of Los Angeles and other cities not to build yep but the city of city of LA being you know so uh you know uh altruistic in some ways we we went ahead and we built it anyway whereas other cities saw that perverse incentive and said forget that we're not building anything and then you then you get this discrepancy amongst cities. Yeah one of the things I I always noted particularly when I was a a a staff member working for for Bill Rosendahl was that it it really felt like the county was focusing its resources on the smaller cities in the unincorporated areas and was a lot of times sort of up against the city of of Los Angeles and the LA wasn't getting its fair share of the money is is that part of the concern is that LA is going to actually lose dollars as a result of this absolutely um absolutely it's part of the the concern I mean that the county the way they talk about like Measure A for example they talk about it as oh this is county money well it's not county money it's it is it is pass-through dollars that the taxpayers have voted on for homelessness.

SPEAKER_00 49:24

You know when you look at at who's spending money on homelessness the county doesn't spend a dime of its own general fund whereas the city is spending a tremendous amount of its own general fund and in fact that's one of the reasons that we're in our financial mess is because we don't get the pass-through money like the county county doesn't provide the services so we step up and we use our general fund which then basically drains funding away from police, fire, roads, infrastructure, all of the key things that the city is obligated to do, you know, fall prey to the fact that we have to uh we also are spending money on things that the county should be doing and measure is a good example you know the when I you talk about it being the county money it's it's not the county's dollars. We get a small amount in terms of local funding formula which the county talks about but that's peanuts uh when you look at the overall amount uh and frankly when you look at who actually is who's paying for measure the majority you know not the the the largest group of people who are paying Measure A are are residents of the city of LA uh and the vast majority of you know homeless folks are living in the city of LA so honestly most of Measure should be going to the city of LA but we know that that's not what happens the county is instead investing it's in its own bureaucracy and is going to focus on on areas outside of the city that have no other that don't have a city that's stepping up to do the job.

SPEAKER_01 51:02

So this whole discussion can can sound very esoteric to to just sort of the average uh observer the average voter you know it sounds like alphabet soup and you know rearranging deck chairs and stuff like that help make it a little bit more specific I mean what what do you think the the the era of disruption that's that that's coming over when the when this starts happening the money comes out the workers are go back to the county how is that going to impact somebody who's unhoused and how is that going to impact what somebody who's housed sees going on in the city of LA Well I I I'm not I don't know how it's going to happen but I'll tell you I'm very concerned that it will have a dramatic impact that it will um make it more difficult to get people housed uh which means that there'll be more people on the streets um which means you know more encampments and it means uh you know less and and if if Lhasa is not able you know Lhasa has its issues but ultimately they're being responsible for paying the service providers who are running all of these interim sites and permanent supportive housing sites.

SPEAKER_00 52:12

If they're if you know this bureau new bureaucracy is not is not doing a full substitute uh we're gonna see you know we're gonna see a lot of these places either going out of business or or or closing up shops and you know and that means you know there's not a lot of places for folks to go. You know uh it's it's very problematic. I mean of course on the flip side you know you have uh Trump recession coming on and in a weird way recessions actually reduce homelessness um because it ends up lowering the cost of housing but that is a horrible way to reduce homelessness is to have a mass recession and and uh you know and how much it reduces in a tight market like LA open question I guess that's an open question too and and I'm sort of being facetious about that aspect but it's it's because that's you know we're we're getting we're getting a one-two punch in that sense of of what's happening here with Lhasa and locally and then uh and then what's happening at the federal level uh not just the recession possibilities brought on by the tariffs but but all of the you know reductions in federal funds on critical programs that um that affect how you know the CDBG money that money that that that that's community development block grant money money that goes to uh either housing or homeless prevention that may not even be going through Lhasa uh if all of that money is cut or drastically reduced that also has a a very negative impact on on homelessness.

SPEAKER_01 53:42

So you you talked about how Lhasa was formed. You know it's part of a a a history of of a troubled relationship between the city and the county there's times when council members and supervisors or mayors and supervisors weren't speaking to each other. For for a long time the the city and the county were getting along really well like in I think it was 2015 or 16 we approved a comprehensive homelessness strategy. One day they approved something very similar like a day later two entities were in sync for a while and then we had the era of locking arms for the past two years uh certainly sounds like arms have unlocked and you're talking about this probably winds up back in court how worried should uh people in in Los Angeles be that the progress that has started over the past couple years is um is at risk uh I think they should be worried uh I think it's you know that there's there's a lot to worry about these days and I I don't want to add to anybody's plate but uh uh this this is very concerning and but it it's not that things were all hunky-dory I think things were um they they weren't as transparent and so part of this this thing is is bringing to the surface a lot of the issues that have been there I mean there there has been some tension with the county through the alliance case uh you know which which is a there's city and the county were were were both sued and we had different approaches to that and you know that that has also you know plays into all of this and in some ways exacerbates some of the tensions because um you know we have requirements under the alliance case that we cannot meet unless we have the county's uh cooperation yep and and you know they they have little incentive to be cooperative on some of this stuff or yeah cooperative maybe the wrong word but uh you know fully engaged and and willing to to step up to the plate. Yeah I I it's the Judge Carter's courtroom is where I started seeing the signs of the the sort of splintering between the city and the county coming out in in into public. And I was surprised this issue didn't come up in his hearing last week when they started talking about you know receivership. They weren't talking about the the the the coming county move which struck me as a bit odd um before we go Bob uh you're working on a lot of interesting stuff in in in in cd three um just to give some context what have you been doing around the issue of homelessness in the West Valley well when I when I started in the uh council there were no homeless interventions at all uh and I have been very diligent and focused on creating a tremendous amount so much so that you know under the Judge Carter numbers uh my you know my district meets its numbers uh which means that basically his formula was you you create beds for 60% new beds for 60% of the homeless population at a certain year.

SPEAKER_00 56:41

We've done that we've done that by creating uh interim housing tiny home communities or I call them cabin communities bridge homes uh permanent supportive housing a family uh uh shelter a you know senior supportive housing you know throughout my district every community in my district there's five different communities in my district is you know has multiple interventions uh within within that and by interventions and all the the things whether you know that range from the the sort of lowest touch of safe parking of which we have several to you know through interim sites to permanent sites you know so the the whole gamut uh you know I've been very focused on on creating the beds uh and you know trying to entice as my as as many service providers in to be helping with the homeless population that I have and and I have one of the you know districts with the lowest homeless populations in the city uh but that doesn't change the fact that it is still a top issue for constituents because uh folks are not used to having homeless in the district the way that they've been you know and uh you know and and and you know one anytime you have homeless folks on the street it's it's an issue because it's a humanitarian issue uh but it also becomes a a community issue. I mean some of the sites in my district became like not the biggest homeless encampments in the city but uh like like the one in front of uh Winnetka High School for the Winnetka underpass and we broke the 311 system we set the record a couple of times for so many calls about that encampment not because it was the biggest it wasn't the biggest by far but uh the way the valley is set up the 101 you know it there's only a pedestrian underpass every mile and a and a half and and so those underpasses for example become critical uh corridors and if they're completely encamped that means the kids walk into school or walking in the street the people walk into church the people walk into synagogue you know all the things that that that happen in that critical corridor uh become a very uh you know uh serious community flashpoint uh so you know part of it has been dealing with creating the encampments and part of it's been trying to to make sure that certain areas like the Winneka underpass are are are clear of encampments uh because we don't want a kid killed by walking in the middle of the street which is what almost happened on a few occasions.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

Uh Councilmember Bob Blumenfield thanks for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 59:22

Well thanks for having Mike always a pleasure anytime.

SPEAKER_01 59:26

I started this episode by talking about how this issue is really about people people who are unhoused and what the government is doing or not doing to help them. In a great piece of journalism reporter Liz Chow of the LA Public Press spoke to people who are homeless about the county action. The upshot of her article is that most of the people she spoke with thought the current system is failing them and they had little faith that reorganizing agencies and shifting funds would do much to change that. The article is worth reading and it's linked in the show notes for this episode. And that does it for this episode of What's Next Los Angeles my thanks to Thanyel Wisias, our producer my thanks also to LA Forward for sponsoring and partnering with me on this podcast. Until next time, take good care and peace