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The huge nonprofit behind the measures that secured funding after barely showing any improvements on the streets and spent nearly a decade unprecedented taxpayers on the homeless, urging voters to double.
To alleviate concerns that past funds could be wasted and lead to waste and abuse, the authors of two new tax measures to tear them a complex system of surveillance to increase transparency and accountability.
Voters accept the deal, with over $1.5 billion (ULA and A) going up over the two measures this year, more than digits of magnitude more than the previous one.
One outcome of the promise of surveillance is a new slate of abbreviations for the public to digest in Ulacocc, Ltrha, Ecrha, Lacahsa.
Behind these names is a matrix of oversight committees, some of which are made up of experts in government, business, housing development, and homeless services, as well as elected city and county staff and others from prominent nonprofits.
The new quasi-government structure created by Major A has a wide range of goals and specific goals to assess whether the goal is being achieved, said Miguel Santana, president and CEO of the California Community Foundation, a leading supporter for the Major.
“We have hope that on the first day of this new chapter on this issue, generations will become instinctive from now on,” Santana said in an interview. “It’s a second nature, and it’s given that homelessness investments are always valued against a constantly set goal.”
However, there is a drawback to the surge in deliberative bodies that meet at different times and at multiple locations and oversee programs that may overlap both in their destination and geography.
For decision makers, there may be more than one regular meeting. And when the public tries to chase after money, it can all be very confusing.
Los Angeles City Councilman Nitya Raman;
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles City Councilman Nitya Raman said she was optimistic that the two new boards she sits with (Ecrha and Lacahsa) will “ensure that coordination and communication between all different players can be improved.”
But so far, she has found herself frustrated.
“I invested a lot of time in it, but so far the time I invested in it hasn’t necessarily resulted in something that seems better for the city of Los Angeles,” Raman said.
Kelly Morrison, the founder of a nonprofit advocate for change in the mental health system, has been sitting on the city’s proposition HHHH Homeless Housing Fund oversight committee and feels that all new groups will not follow.
“I’m confused by all the different entities,” Morrison said.
So what are these new institutions and how do they fit together or overlap? There is no official diagram, so you may have to do a phor.
Imagine two spigots pouring money into three buckets.
One Spigot is united to house LA, a 2022 city measurement commonly known as the mansion tax. After a late start, ULA is on track to raise more than $5 billion a year for housing and homelessness prevention programs, as requested for short.
There is ULACOC, a 15-member citizen oversight committee, to make recommendations for use in city councils.
The second spigot, Major A, is split into two buckets.
Just under 40% of Los Angeles County’s Affordable Housing Solutions Bureau (Lacasa), which was established as a regional authority by the California Legislature in 2022, will be created as regional authorities, modeled after metropolitan transport. Its mission is to develop housing and prevent homelessness across the county, as ULA is entrusted with doing in cities. The 22-person board consisted of all five county supervisors, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Basu and Raman, and selected officials from several cities and nonprofits.
Approximately 60% of major A funds are directed by the Community Homeless Cooperation Executive Committee for Homeless Services (ECRHA). The committee, created by the County Board of Supervisors in 2023, consists of eight officials elected from representatives of the county, the city of Los Angeles, small cities, and the governor. Recommendations for funds are subject to vote by the Board of Supervisors.
The supervisor has created a leadership table for Regional Homelessness Cooperation (LTRHA) to provide advice and technical support to the Executive Committee to develop plans to reduce homelessness. The 29 appointees representing business, homeless services, academia, labor, faith communities and veterans were selected by Santana and Peter Laggern, presidents and CEOs of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.
Every new body has growing pains, from both unexpected errors and unexpected consequences of the language that created them.
The requirement for ULA Commission housing development, conservation and finance experts to fill six seats has made it difficult to find appointees who have not done business or lobbyed with the city. Several members had to reject themselves on the vote, and at least two people resigned due to the conflict.
At Lacasa, the new housing agency, the interim CEO’s choice led to a Times article in which questions were raised regarding the review of the selected candidate’s resume. After initially saying he intended to be “a long time,” he then said he had no intention of applying for a permanent job.
Sofia Mendoza holds a sign outside Los Angeles City Hall on December 10, 2024.
(Ringo chiu/for the the the the alls
Surveillance provides a representation of the local jurisdiction where the majority of decisions are closed. Ronsonchew, homeless manager of the South Bay Urban Government Council, said small city appointees on the Executive Committee want to test their new powers. The committee asked supervisors to postpone approval of the 2025-26 Homelessness Budget and measure that 15% of services are dedicated to the city. The supervisors did neither.
“It’s suspending the members of the Executive Committee about their effectiveness,” Chu said.
For the public, it is difficult to maintain tabs on new watchdogs. They all have live streamed public meetings. However, they are not easy to find in a jumble of uneven websites, and the vast numbers of them require quite a bit of time to see.
The unwritten order for all monitor groups is to overcome disillusionment with previous tax measures that were widely seen as over-promotion and shortage as homelessness continues to rise, said Anne Sewill, former head of the Los Angeles housing division, who is sitting at the leadership table.
“What every committee is trying to do is not only do the intentions of the voters, but we are happy that they voted for this,” Sewill said.
The tension was evident during the ULA Oversight Committee meeting in March when the Los Angeles Housing Authority, which oversees the ULA contract, reported that the initial contract was not available until at least February.
“We’re one of ULA’s many non-profit advocates,” said Laura Raymond, executive director of Transportation and Housing Advocacy Group ACT-LA, one of ULA’s many non-profit advocates. “We wait so long. People think it’s a failure even though things are in the pipeline. We have to think of this and make a better plan.”
Like the previous proposition HHH, the impulse to show results led to an overly loud declaration. It promotes more than 800 units under construction to house the LA website from United. This figure also refers to ULA’s first housing spending $55 million in the first year report, completing seven ongoing continuous projects, either underfunded or without sufficient funding.
Although ULA refrains from setting targets for how many homes it will generate, it has measured five broad targets, including reducing street homelessness and increasing affordable housing, and has promised that a specific target will be set for each.
Coordinating these targets was the leadership table’s job. Based on research from UCLA’s California Policy Lab, we created several metrics for each goal, and created a specific target for each metric to be achieved by 2030.
The proposed indicator, published in January and approved by the county supervisor in March, highlights and avoids the “end homeless” spirit that characterizes the previous measures. For example, the plan says that unsheltered homelessness will be reduced by 30% from the latest 52,365.
The process was “considering the combination of analytical work using available data and what is achievable.”
To some extent, the power of the new watchdog is limited by the normative language of the measures themselves.
Jason Ward, co-director of Housing and Homelessness Centres at Institute RAND, said that due to both requirements for projects of more than 40 units, the cost of housing generated by both measures is higher than what is needed. Ward recently published a survey that claims that union requirements added 21% to the cost of the project.
Ward said unions on which this requirement is being promoted will induce developers to propose small projects and increase the costs of larger projects.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass will be taking California Gov. Gavin Newsom at a press conference in LA to announce new state funding to bring homeless people from the streets to housing, providing comprehensive services on October 29, 2024.
(Brian van der Bragg/Los Angeles Times)
The new oversight structure will set up a new homeless division for Los Angeles County to manage more than $300 million in county-funded services that are attracting attention through the Los Angeles Department of Homeless Services, and Los Angeles County will set up a new homeless division to establish a new homeless division.
The key question facing new surveillance systems is how to overcome the Byzantine distribution of authority and tensions between governments at the various levels that plague the current system.
For example, funds to prevent people from becoming homeless are spread across all three buckets. The ULA stipulates that 30% of its funds will be spent on homelessness prevention programs. Lacasa also has an obligation to fund prevention. The supervisor then took budgetary precautions under the share of measurement funds.
Currently, there is no unified plan for how to fuse three sources of funding between the city and the county and a range of services, including cash grants, counseling, negotiations and eviction defense.
What’s needed is a “uniform system of one person in charge,” former Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Faier said he is currently advocating for homelessness prevention at a central city law center.
“It requires that there be some concessions of authority over how money is spent,” he said.
Morrison, an HHH supervisory member, said she was also concerned about how accountability works.
“Where does the back stop in these three entities?” asked Morrison. “Unless the Buck stops somewhere, it just challenges the universe.”
Santana, who is sitting both at Lacasa and the Leadership Table, said she is confident in her collective responsibility.
“This is not a dictatorship,” Santana said. “No one is responsible for failure or a person responsible for success. It will be a failure or success in our sharing.”
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