West Hollywood has been skeptical of LAHSA for a while now. So when Los Angeles city leaders gathered Wednesday to debate pulling roughly $300 million in annual funding from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority — the joint city-county agency created in 1993 to coordinate homeless services and distribute funding to providers – it was not exactly breaking news inside the City Hall on Santa Monica Boulevard.
At a City Council meeting last November, Councilmember John Erickson made it plain. He said he would feel more comfortable not moving forward with LAHSA and saw no point in participating in the agency’s homeless count past 2026. Vice Mayor John Heilman backed him up. “We can’t rely on county agencies to provide assistance,” Heilman said after the meeting. “We need to focus on what we can do in West Hollywood.”
That was November. Nobody in LA City Hall was paying much attention.
Wednesday they started paying attention.
The Los Angeles City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee sat down to debate whether to pull roughly $300 million a year from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. The county already voted to pull its own $300 million last April. The feds opened a fraud investigation. The agency’s CEO stood before her own governing commission last Friday and said LAHSA was in crisis. Morale is very low, she said. The structure is unstable. LAHSA has been set up for decades as the entity that takes the blame.
That’s not a critic talking. That’s the person running the place. I’m thinking they should know.
The Numbers Have Never Added Up
Between 2015 and 2022, LAHSA’s funding grew from $63 million to $808 million. Nearly a billion dollars with a big ole B. In spite of the nearly 13 fold increase, homelessness got worse. A federal judge commissioned an audit of $2.4 billion in city spending and found the money was nearly impossible to track. Service providers across the county have gone months without reimbursement. Some dipped into reserves. Some took on debt. Officials promised to fix the payment problems nearly two years ago.
Still broken.
West Hollywood Has Been Here Before
Councilmember John Erickson called continued LAHSA participation a waste of time. Heilman said stop waiting on the county. West Hollywood’s own 2025 LAHSA count came back at 101 people, a number residents who walk Santa Monica Boulevard every day found hard to square with what they actually see. As I like to say, that math ain’t mathing. The City has long had its doubts about what that annual count captures and what it misses.
(Courtesy of the City of West Hollywood)
West Hollywood did not wait for LA to figure any of this out. The Holloway Interim Housing Program is open and full. Healthcare in Action runs street outreach seven days a week. The Care Team answers calls around the clock. The City built its own coordinated response because it had already decided the regional system was not going to deliver it.
Councilmember Rodriguez Has Had Enough
Councilmember Monica Rodriguez has been trying to have this exact conversation for two years. Wednesday she told the committee that 316 days had passed since a staff report laying out their options was delivered and they were only now getting around to discussing it. “No longer can we afford indecision,” she said. “We still have a broken and dysfunctional system.”
Mayor Karen Bass put out a statement after the meeting warning the council not to move too fast. A thoughtful transition plan, she said, is needed before pulling LAHSA funding. What she failed to mention is that her own administration created a new Homelessness Bureau nine months ago. Problem is, it hasn’t hired a single person for it yet.
Committee chair Nithya Raman said one more discussion is coming, expected March 18. Then the full council decides.
West Hollywood looked at LAHSA, looked at its own streets, and decided not to wait. That decision was made quite a while back. Hard to believe Los Angeles is just now asking the same question.
Related Stories:
• Federal Judge Questions Reliability of Los Angeles Homeless Services Data
• 101 People Counted as Homeless in West Hollywood During 2025 LAHSA Survey
• Holloway Interim Housing Program Secures $642,400 Grant for Operations
Bravo!
In a way, it’s a bit like playing Ragdoll Hit—when the structure holding everything together becomes unstable, even small shifts can create chaotic results. Addressing the underlying structural issues will be key to building a more effective and sustainable approach.
The thing is there are never consequences for any of these behaviors. No one’s gonna get in trouble and no one will ever really do anything. We need the fraud in this state called out.
It’s pretty much a sure bet that this money could be traced to politician’s reelection campaigns and their pet projects. All that money floating around and it can’t be traced?
The unhoused situation has seemingly become worse. In this week alone I had to wait at the bus stop on the side of a popular restaurant on the blvd. Hugo’s. There was an unhoused man masturbating. It’s not the first time he has put on this show. I then was walking towards city hall, only to get called a white bitch because I didn’t have any change. I’ve watched people smoking meth, bathing in the sinks of bathrooms and washing their clothing in the waterfall feature if the park. If I were to do ANY of this I’d be in… Read more »
Karen Bass is bad news. I don’t think she can be trusted to do the right thing for the people, but only what she thinks is right for herself & her “friends”. I feel there’s a self-serving motivation behind everything she does.
The whole county of Los Angeles needs an enema….they’re all so full of sh*t.
You mean butterfly poop! lol
LAHSA is a joint powers authority of the city and county of Los Angeles,created in 1993,and is the lead agency for the HUD-funded Los Angeles Continuum of Care. While it manages federal,state,county,and city funds,it is not a federal agency itself..? Looks like the federal,state,county,and city,should have raised the red flags long ago..The whole system is corrupt..I would cut them all,and have the los Angeles housing authority,make homeless people go to drug and alcohol rehabs,have a mental health evaluation,ect..Before possibly getting a housing voucher..!