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Los Angeles Times
09-07-2025
- Los Angeles Times
L.A. vowed to remove 9,800 encampments. But are homeless people getting housed?
Musician Dennis Henriquez woke up in a doorway in East Hollywood last month, hidden behind cardboard and sheltered by a tarp. When he peered outside, half a dozen sanitation workers were standing nearby, waiting to carry out one of the more than 30 homeless encampment cleanups planned that day by the city of Los Angeles. Henriquez eventually emerged, carried out a bicycle and deposited it on a grassy area 20 feet away. He also dragged over a backpack, a scooter, two guitars, a piece of luggage and a beach chair. The city sanitation crew grabbed the tarp and the cardboard, tossing them into a trash truck. Then, the contingent of city workers, including two police officers, climbed into their vehicles and drove away, leaving behind Henriquez and his pile of belongings. This type of operation, known as a CARE-plus cleanup, plays out hundreds of times each week in the city, with sanitation crews seizing and destroying tents, tarps, pallets, shopping carts and many other objects. The cleanups have emerged as a huge source of conflict in a five-year-old legal dispute over the city's handling of the homelessness crisis. Depending on how the cleanup issue is resolved, the city could face legal sanctions, millions of dollars in penalties or increased outside oversight of its homeless programs. In 2022, city leaders reached a legal settlement with the nonprofit L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, promising to create 12,915 homeless beds or other housing opportunities by June 2027. Eventually, they also agreed to remove 9,800 homeless encampments by June 2026 — with an encampment defined as an individual tent, makeshift structure, car or recreational vehicle. To reach the latter goal, city leaders have been counting each encampment removed from streets, sidewalks and alleys during the Bureau of Sanitation's CARE-plus cleanups — even in cases where the resident did not obtain housing or a shelter bed. The alliance has strongly objected to the city's methodology, arguing that destroying a tent, without housing its occupants, runs afoul of the 2022 settlement agreement. Any 'encampment resolution' tallied by the city must be more permanent — and address the larger goal of reducing homelessness, said Elizabeth Mitchell, an attorney for the alliance. 'If the person insists on staying where they are and nothing else has happened, that's not a resolution,' she said. 'They can't count that.' City leaders have carried out CARE-plus cleanups for years, saying they are needed to protect public safety and restore sidewalk access for wheelchair users, the elderly and others. Some encampments are strewn with debris that spills across an entire walkway or out into the street, while others carry the smell of urine, fecal matter or decaying food waste. The cleanups have a Sisyphean quality. Many seasoned residents drag their tents across the street, wait out the cleanup, then return to their original spots in the afternoon. The process frequently restarts a week or two later. The alliance's legal team, alarmed by the inclusion of CARE-plus cleanups in the encampment reduction count, recently spent several days trying to persuade a federal judge to seize control of the city's homelessness initiatives from Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council and turn them over to a third-party receiver. U.S. Dist. Judge David O. Carter, who presides over the case, declined to take that step, saying it went too far. But he has made clear that he, too, objects to the city's approach to eliminating the 9,800 encampments. In March, Carter issued a court order saying the city may not count CARE-plus cleanups toward its goal because, as the alliance had argued, they are 'not permanent in nature.' Last month, in a 62-page ruling, he found the city had 'willfully disobeyed' that order — and had improperly reported its encampment reductions. Clarifying his position somewhat, the judge also said that the city cannot count an encampment reduction unless it is 'accompanied by an offer of shelter or housing.' 'Individuals need not accept the offer, but an offer of available shelter or housing must be made,' he wrote. Attorney Shayla Myers, who represents homeless advocacy groups that have intervened in the case, has opposed the 9,800 goal from the beginning, saying it creates a quota system that increases the likelihood that city workers will violate the property rights of unhoused residents. 'Throwing away tents doesn't help the homelessness crisis,' she said. 'Building housing does.' City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, who helped negotiate the settlement, told the court last month that his office does not count the tents that homeless people move temporarily — around the corner or across the street — during city cleanups. However, the city does include those that are permanently removed because they block the sidewalk or pose a public health or safety threat, he said. Szabo, during his testimony, said that when he negotiated the promise to remove 9,800 encampments, he did not expect that every tent removal would lead to someone moving inside. The city is already working to fulfill the alliance agreement's requirement of creating 12,915 homeless beds or other housing opportunities. On top of that, Szabo said, encampment residents have 'free will' to refuse an offer of housing. 'I wouldn't ever agree that the city would be obligated to somehow force people to accept [housing] if they did not want to accept it,' he said. 'We never would have agreed to that. We didn't agree to that.' For an outside observer, it might be difficult to discern what the different types of city encampment operations are designed to accomplish. Bass' Inside Safe initiative moves homeless people into hotel and motel rooms, and at least in some cases, permanent housing. By contrast, CARE cleanups — shorthand for Cleanup and Rapid Engagement — are largely focused on trash removal, with crews hauling away debris from curbs and surrounding areas. CARE-plus cleanups are more comprehensive. Every tent must be moved so workers can haul away debris and, in some instances, powerwash sidewalks. Sanitation crews are supposed to give residents advance warning of a scheduled CARE-plus cleanup, posting notices on utility poles. If residents don't relocate their tents and other belongings, they run the risk of having them taken away. In some cases, cleanup crews take the possessions to a downtown storage facility. In many others, they are tossed. One of the largest CARE-plus cleanups in recent weeks took place in the Westlake district, where nearly three dozen tents and structures lined a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard. A construction loader drove back and forth on the sidewalk, scooping up tents and depositing them in a trash truck. Ryan Cranford, 42, said he didn't know the cleanup was scheduled until minutes beforehand. He wound up losing his tent, a bed and a canopy, but managed to keep his backpack, saying it contained 'all that matters.' Sitting on a nearby retaining wall, Cranford said he would have accepted a motel room had someone offered one. 'Hell, I'd even take a bus to get all the way back to Oklahoma if I could,' he said. On the opposite side of the street, Tyson Lewis Angeles wheeled his belongings down the street in a shopping cart before sanitation workers descended on his spot. He said an outreach worker had given him a referral for a shelter bed the day before. Angeles, 30, said he was not interested, in part because he deals with panic attacks, PTSD and other mental health issues. He also does not want a roommate, or the rules imposed by homeless shelters. 'Basically, it's like volunteer jail,' he said. While Angeles managed to safeguard his possessions, others are frequently less successful. Nicholas Johnson, who is living in a box truck in Silver Lake, said city crews took the vast majority of his belongings during a CARE-plus cleanup in mid-June. Some were destroyed, while others were transported by sanitation workers to a downtown storage facility, he said. Johnson, 56, said he does not know whether some of his most prized possessions, including letters written by his grandmother, went into that facility or were tossed. City crews also took books, tools, his Buddhist prayer bowls and a huge amount of clothes. 'All of my clothing — all of my clothing — the wearables and the sellables, all mixed in. Hats, scarves, socks, ties, a lot of accessories that I wear — you know, double breasted suits from the '30s, the suit pants,' he said. Johnson said the city's cleanup process is a 'harassment ceremony' that only makes life more stressful for people on the street. 'They hit you in the kneecaps when they know you're already down,' he said. Earlier this year, city officials informed the court that they had removed about 6,100 tents, makeshift shelters and vehicles — nearly two-thirds of what the agreement with the alliance requires. Whether the city will challenge any portion of the judge's ruling is still unclear. In a statement, a lawyer for the city contends that the ruling 'misconstrues the city's obligations.' 'We are keeping open our options for next steps,' said the lawyer, Theane Evangelis.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A federal judge is demanding a fix for L.A.'s broken homelessness system. Is receivership his next step?
With the top city and county elected officials sitting in his jury box, the judge lectured for more than an hour, excoriating what he called the Rocky Horror Picture Show of homeless services in Los Angeles. But when it came time to reveal the drastic remedy anticipated by a courtroom full of spectators, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter hit pause. He gave Mayor Karen Bass and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Kathryn Barger until May to fix the broken system, vowing only then to become "your worst nightmare" should they fail. "I think as elected officials, you've inherited an extraordinarily difficult task," he told them. "And I imagine you came to court today thinking that hell and brimstone would rain upon you. Quite the opposite. At the end of this, I'm going to be asking if there's anything that your branch of government can do to resolve the problems that have been presented to you." An attorney in the case, alleging that the city had failed to meet its obligations in a settlement agreement, urged Carter to employ his ultimate weapon — appointing a receiver to run the city's homelessness programs. But that prospect led the often blustery judge to turn openly introspective, ruminating on the limits of his power and the risks of using it to try to reverse decades of mismanagement by other branches of government. "So unless the two of you can work this out in some way, the court's going to have to," he told Bass and Barger. "And I'm not sure what to do about that because then I am intruding. I've got a great chance of a reversal [on appeal], I understand that. But if I don't, then I'm complicit, I'm sitting here doing nothing." His dilemma arises from a 5-year-old lawsuit brought by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a nonprofit organization of business owners, property owners and residents. It alleged that the city and county had failed to address street homelessness. Through an order and a settlement agreement reached earlier in the case, the city is required to create nearly 20,000 new beds for homeless people and remove about 10,000 tents and vehicles from the streets. A separate settlement requires the county to pay for services at some of the city beds and to create 3,000 new mental health beds. Read more: Court-ordered audit finds major flaws in L.A.'s homeless services Carter's oversight of those agreements took a sharp turn last year when the Alliance law firm, Umhofer, Mitchell and King, accused the city of noncompliance and asked the judge to fine it $6.4 million. He declined to do that but, in place of sanctions, pressured the city to pay for an outside audit of its accounting for billions of dollars it has spent on homeless services. That audit, released late in February, found disjointed services and inadequate financial controls leaving the city's homelessness programs susceptible to waste and fraud. But it focused particularly on the lack of accountability at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a joint agency formed in the 1990s to manage homeless services for the city and county. Through the 2017 Measure H homelessness sales tax and an infusion of city and state funds, LAHSA's budget has grown more than seven times over to its current $875 million. Calling last week's hearing to explore the ramifications of the audit, Carter requested the agency's chief executive, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, to attend, along with Bass, Barger, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, City Controller Kenneth Mejia and Gov. Gavin Newsom. The judge treated Newsom's absence as a predictable annoyance. "He has a blog, and he's busy blogging." But he lamented that he had no authority to compel Adams Kellums, who was then giving an address at Harvard University, to be present since LAHSA is not a named party to the lawsuit. Twice he suggested the agency should be sued, bringing it under his jurisdiction. The judge's outrage over the state of homelessness poured forth for more than an hour as he quoted from a handful of audits going back decades that, over and over, faulted LAHSA for poor accounting procedures. "So this isn't new," Carter said. "This is old news to elected officials and to LAHSA. There's no auditing going on. There's no transparency. There's no accountability." But his posture turned skeptical when L.A. Alliance attorney Matthew Umhofer said he planned to petition for a receiver. "What's this supposed to look like?" Carter asked sharply. "What's the function of this receiver? What are they going to do?" "The receiver, from our perspective, becomes the homelessness czar for the city," Umhofer replied. "It's going to have to be an 800-pound gorilla," Carter said. Umhofer said that he would not propose names off the cuff but that it should be someone with gravitas, such as Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who oversaw the compensation for 9/11 claims. "Anybody know what his fees are?" Carter asked. "I do." In a back-and-forth on what a receiver could do, Umhofer said it might include "control of the budget around homelessness in Los Angeles." Carter found that problematic. "Nobody elected the court, nobody elected the receivership," he said. "That could be construed as a real intrusion of power. And I'm trying to get a resolution from you, but let's hear the drama of this for just a moment, because I'm having trouble sorting through what this would even potentially look like." Umhofer argued that the remedy needed to be "extraordinary because the failure of the city and the county is extraordinary." Because the city has failed, he said, the receiver would have authority "vested by the court to commandeer what it needs within the city in order to solve this problem." "That's really a dramatic action by a court," Carter said. "And if that was ever to be considered, I need to be very certain what the attainable goals are and why the legislative and executive branch can't accomplish this." "Because they have not accomplished it, your honor. That's exactly the point ... because the executive and legislative branches have failed." Could the receiver, Carter asked, order Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park to proceed with an unpopular housing project in Venice that she has blocked? "If we need to overcome some NIMBYism to get shelter and housing built,we should absolutely empower a receiver to do that," Umhofer said. "It's the kind of power that I would expect this court to exercise if faced with that question." When he continued to press the issue, Carter asked: "Are you asking that the court take over the entire city? First of all, I would be working with a bureaucracy that is not functioning from my situation. I don't know that I want to work with those same people anymore. That's doomed to failure." Finally, he said, "Go back and think, if you're asking for this drama of a receivership, how that really works and why the court would be more effective." No mention was made during the hearing of the looming decision made by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to strip LAHSA of $375 million in annual funding and shift it into a new county department. Carter gave no indication whether he would view that as a positive step or a distraction. But, in response to a question from The Times, Umhofer partner Elizabeth Mitchell later said the move did not address their complaints about the city, characterizing it as no more than "moving the deck chairs around the Titanic." "There needs to be some massive structural changes to address the underlying issues, and I can't see them proposing anything that will possibly come close," Mitchell wrote in an email. The firm will soon file a motion asking Carter to appoint a receiver, she said. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
A federal judge is demanding a fix for L.A.'s broken homelessness system. Is receivership his next step?
With the top city and county elected officials sitting in his jury box, the judge lectured for more than an hour, excoriating what he called the Rocky Horror Picture Show of homeless services in Los Angeles. But when it came time to reveal the drastic remedy anticipated by a courtroom full of spectators, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter hit pause. He gave Mayor Karen Bass and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Kathryn Barger until May to fix the broken system, vowing only then to become 'your worst nightmare' should they fail. 'I think as elected officials, you've inherited an extraordinarily difficult task,' he told them. 'And I imagine you came to court today thinking that hell and brimstone would rain upon you. Quite the opposite. At the end of this, I'm going to be asking if there's anything that your branch of government can do to resolve the problems that have been presented to you.' An attorney in the case, alleging that the city had failed to meet its obligations in a settlement agreement, urged Carter to employ his ultimate weapon — appointing a receiver to run the city's homelessness programs. But that prospect led the often blustery judge to turn openly introspective, ruminating on the limits of his power and the risks of using it to try to reverse decades of mismanagement by other branches of government. 'So unless the two of you can work this out in some way, the court's going to have to,' he told Bass and Barger. 'And I'm not sure what to do about that because then I am intruding. I've got a great chance of a reversal [on appeal], I understand that. But if I don't, then I'm complicit, I'm sitting here doing nothing.' His dilemma arises from a 5-year-old lawsuit brought by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a nonprofit organization of business owners, property owners and residents. It alleged that the city and county had failed to address street homelessness. Through an order and a settlement agreement reached earlier in the case, the city is required to create nearly 20,000 new beds for homeless people and remove about 10,000 tents and vehicles from the streets. A separate settlement requires the county to pay for services at some of the city beds and to create 3,000 new mental health beds. Carter's oversight of those agreements took a sharp turn last year when the Alliance law firm, Umhofer, Mitchell and King, accused the city of noncompliance and asked the judge to fine it $6.4 million. He declined to do that but, in place of sanctions, pressured the city to pay for an outside audit of its accounting for billions of dollars it has spent on homeless services. That audit, released late in February, found disjointed services and inadequate financial controls leaving the city's homelessness programs susceptible to waste and fraud. But it focused particularly on the lack of accountability at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a joint agency formed in the 1990s to manage homeless services for the city and county. Through the 2017 Measure H homelessness sales tax and an infusion of city and state funds, LAHSA's budget has grown more than seven times over to its current $875 million. Calling last week's hearing to explore the ramifications of the audit, Carter requested the agency's chief executive, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, to attend, along with Bass, Barger, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, City Controller Kenneth Mejia and Gov. Gavin Newsom. The judge treated Newsom's absence as a predictable annoyance. 'He has a blog, and he's busy blogging.' But he lamented that he had no authority to compel Adams Kellums, who was then giving an address at Harvard University, to be present since LAHSA is not a named party to the lawsuit. Twice he suggested the agency should be sued, bringing it under his jurisdiction. The judge's outrage over the state of homelessness poured forth for more than an hour as he quoted from a handful of audits going back decades that, over and over, faulted LAHSA for poor accounting procedures. 'So this isn't new,' Carter said. 'This is old news to elected officials and to LAHSA. There's no auditing going on. There's no transparency. There's no accountability.' But his posture turned skeptical when L.A. Alliance attorney Matthew Umhofer said he planned to petition for a receiver. 'What's this supposed to look like?' Carter asked sharply. 'What's the function of this receiver? What are they going to do?' 'The receiver, from our perspective, becomes the homelessness czar for the city,' Umhofer replied. 'It's going to have to be an 800-pound gorilla,' Carter said. Umhofer said that he would not propose names off the cuff but that it should be someone with gravitas, such as Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who oversaw the compensation for 9/11 claims. 'Anybody know what his fees are?' Carter asked. 'I do.' In a back-and-forth on what a receiver could do, Umhofer said it might include 'control of the budget around homelessness in Los Angeles.' Carter found that problematic. 'Nobody elected the court, nobody elected the receivership,' he said. 'That could be construed as a real intrusion of power. And I'm trying to get a resolution from you, but let's hear the drama of this for just a moment, because I'm having trouble sorting through what this would even potentially look like.' Umhofer argued that the remedy needed to be 'extraordinary because the failure of the city and the county is extraordinary.' Because the city has failed, he said, the receiver would have authority 'vested by the court to commandeer what it needs within the city in order to solve this problem.' 'That's really a dramatic action by a court,' Carter said. 'And if that was ever to be considered, I need to be very certain what the attainable goals are and why the legislative and executive branch can't accomplish this.' 'Because they have not accomplished it, your honor. That's exactly the point ... because the executive and legislative branches have failed.' Could the receiver, Carter asked, order Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park to proceed with an unpopular housing project in Venice that she has blocked? 'If we need to overcome some NIMBYism to get shelter and housing built,we should absolutely empower a receiver to do that,' Umhofer said. 'It's the kind of power that I would expect this court to exercise if faced with that question.' When he continued to press the issue, Carter asked: 'Are you asking that the court take over the entire city? First of all, I would be working with a bureaucracy that is not functioning from my situation. I don't know that I want to work with those same people anymore. That's doomed to failure.' Finally, he said, 'Go back and think, if you're asking for this drama of a receivership, how that really works and why the court would be more effective.' No mention was made during the hearing of the looming decision made by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to strip LAHSA of $375 million in annual funding and shift it into a new county department. Carter gave no indication whether he would view that as a positive step or a distraction. But, in response to a question from The Times, Umhofer partner Elizabeth Mitchell later said the move did not address their complaints about the city, characterizing it as no more than 'moving the deck chairs around the Titanic.' 'There needs to be some massive structural changes to address the underlying issues, and I can't see them proposing anything that will possibly come close,' Mitchell wrote in an email. The firm will soon file a motion asking Carter to appoint a receiver, she said.
