Contempt possible over LA’s slow response to homeless crisis

LOS ANGELES (CN) — The city of Los Angeles was back in court Wednesday to defend its compliance with a 2022 settlement where it agreed to create more than 12,000 shelter spaces for the tens of thousands of homeless people living in makeshift camps across the city.

U.S. District Judge David Carter, a decorated Vietnam veteran who has frequently used the bench as a pulpit to decry the homelessness crisis that has left Southern California veterans with mental health problems living on the streets, earlier this month issued an "order to show cause" why the city shouldn't be held in contempt.

The judge, a Bill Clinton appointee, noted at the start of the hearing in downtown LA that it wasn't the first time that the city had failed to live up to its obligations under the 2022 agreement. Carter pointed to a consistent pattern of delay in providing the required quarterly information to the court-appointed special master as well as to the data monitor he appointed earlier this year.

Theane Evangelis, an attorney for the city, responded that LA has been making great strides in reducing homelessness and had already created more than 8,000 new shelter spaces, with another 5,000 in the pipeline. Under its settlement with the LA Alliance for Human Rights — an organization of citizens and business owners fed up with the intractable homelessness problem that has led to streets being lined with tents and debris — the city is required to add 12,915 new shelter beds before a June 2027 deadline.

"The city is working tirelessly to help unhoused people," she told the judge. "But this hearing isn't about what the city is doing to create housing — it's about reporting."

In May, Carter conducted an evidentiary hearing after the LA Alliance of Human Rights argued that LA continues to fall behind in meeting its milestones without an explanation or a demonstration that it's making its best efforts.

As a result of that evidentiary hearing, the judge ordered the city and the plaintiffs to select a third-party monitor to review and verify the city's quarterly numbers, deal with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA, to resolve any data issues, and to issue public reports on the city's data compliance.

The quarterly data in question pertains to the number of housing or shelter spaces the city has created or obtained, the number of beds offered to unhoused people and the number of shelter spaces available in each council district. The city is also required to work with LAHSA to include updates on the number of unhoused people the agency has engaged, how many of them accepted offers of shelter, how many didn't and their reasons for rejecting an offer, as well as the number of encampments in each council district.

Both the court's special master and the monitor Carter appointed told him recently that city was still delaying their efforts to get accurate information.

In fact, LA got a Ninth Circuit ruling last week that temporarily stayed the appointment of the monitor, Daniel Garrie.

Carter appointed Garrie last month because he didn't like the two candidates that the plaintiffs and the city had agreed upon. One was consulting firm McKinsey, which judge rejected because of their past work marketing OxyContin — a drug the judge said had perpetuated the homeless crisis. The other candidate was former LA City Controller Ron Galperin, whom the judge had reservations about because of his past association with the city.

The judge suggested that Garrie and Galperin could work together as third-party monitors, but the LA City Council dragged its feet approving their appointment, and Carter in the end appointed Garrie with the current city controller in a support role.

However, Garrie informed the judge on Nov. 3 that he has been required to schedule interviews and request information through the city council rather than directly with city employees, which he said has slowed down his work and made it impossible to get his report ready in time.

"This is not new," Elizabeth Mitchell, an attorney for the LA Alliance for Human Rights, told the judge. "We've seen delays and consistent attempts to hamper the court's orders since day one."

The hearing before Carter is likely to take more than one day since the judge refuses to let witnesses testify remotely by Zoom.

Meanwhile, LAHSA reported in July that homelessness in LA has been gradually improving over the past two years.

The estimated number of unsheltered homeless people in the city dropped 17% to 26,972, from 32,680 two years ago. The total of homeless people in LA, both sheltered and unsheltered, fell to 43,699 from 46,260 in 2023.

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