LOS ANGELES (CN) — Los Angeles was ordered to pay $1.8 million in attorneys' fees to homeless advocacy organizations that took the city to court over its failure to comply with a 2022 settlement requiring it to create as many as 13,000 housing and shelter spaces for those living on the streets.
U.S. District Judge David Carter awarded $1.6 million in fees to the LA Alliance for Human Rights, an organization of business owners and residents that sued the city in 2020 to force it to address the intractable homelessness crisis that has left tens of thousands of people camping on the sidewalks or in parks.
The judge, a Bill Clinton appointee, also awarded $200,000 in attorneys' fees to the Los Angeles Community Action Network and LA Catholic Worker, which joined the case as intervenors.
Carter's award of attorneys' fees follows his observations last year that the city repeatedly has 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.
Among other things, the judge said, the city had failed to provide a plan for how it intends to create 12,915 shelter or housing solutions, it had consistently missed its shelter and housing creation milestones, it had omproperly reported homeless encampment reductions and disobeyed the court’s order on encampment reductions.
Moreover, Carter said, the city flouted its reporting responsibilities by failing to substantiate its reporting and failing to provide accurate and comprehensive data when requested by the court, the court-appointed special master, the plaintiffs and an outside auditor.
"The court also determined that the Alliance and intervenors should be justly compensated for their efforts in bringing about compliance by the city if they could demonstrate that such payment was justified," Carter said in Tuesday's order. "The Alliance and intervenors’ unyielding advocacy brought about significant and material benefits to the Los Angeles community."
LA on Thursday filed a notice of appeal of the attorneys' fee award. Representative of the city attorney's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Theane Evangelis, an attorney for the city, argued at a November 2025 hearing that LA had 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, 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,” Evangelis told the judge. “But this hearing isn’t about what the city is doing to create housing — it’s about reporting.”
Last 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.
The estimated number of unsheltered homeless people in the city last year dropped 17% to 26,972, from 32,680 two years earlier. The total of homeless people in LA County, both sheltered and unsheltered, fell to 43,699 from 46,260 in 2023.
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