The federal court hearing is scheduled to continue Thursday to determine whether the city of Los Angeles violated an agreement to create sufficient shelter beds for homeless residents.
Mayor Karen Bass and two city council members were summoned to appear before US District Judge David Carter in downtown Los Angeles to deal with the situation.
The LA Alliance for Human Rights filed a complaint against the city and Los Angeles County in March 2020, accusing the city of being insufficient to address availability and access to homeless shelters.
The judge approved in September 2023 that he agreed to supply an additional 3,000 beds and 450 new subsidies for board and care beds at the end of 2026 for mental and substance abuse treatment.
“The new resources are on top of $293 million. Over the course of the three and a half years of lawsuit, the county has pledged another contract and has pledged to provide 6,700 beds to those experiencing homelessness near the highway.”
An audit in March 2025 failed to confirm the number of homeless shelter beds the city claims to have created.
The court was able to appoint recipients to monitor the city’s homelessness response.
The settlement agreement in part required the city to provide “involvement, cleaning and reduction of camps” milestones and deadlines in each council district and within the city, and the city “adopts our best efforts to comply with established plans, milestones and deadlines.”
According to the LA Alliance, the city first reported 2,137 camps had been cut in 2024 in three months. The figure turns out to be incorrect, and the city has since reported only 1,688 cuts over the six-month period.
The LA Alliance appears to have no exact cuts in the number of camps, and it appears to misunderstand the cleanup as a “camp solution.”
The judge agreed to clean the area and told the LA Alliance that without the offer of shelter or housing, it should not be reported as such, rather than a “solving” or a “reduction” of camps.
The city has more permanent meaning and was ordered to report only cuts of encampments where homeless people have moved out of the streets and were given shelters and housing.
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