What’s happening today?
LA Mayor Karen Bass and Council member Nithya Raman are scheduled to face off in a one-hour, televised debate hosted by NBC4 and Telemundo 52, starting at 7 p.m. LA Material is hosting post-debate breakdown of the mayoral debate over Zoom.
The Hollywood Burbank Airport’s new 14-gate terminal begins operating today, with final flights taking off and landing for the last time at its old terminal next door on Monday. Torched offered an overview of the new facility, including a look at the status of public transit options getting to and from the airport.
Future of homeless services in Los Angeles still under discussion, despite hitting court deadline today
The process for finding a replacement for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority may still be unresolved, even as an obscure entity, known as the Los Angeles Continuum of Care (a term of art for what is essentially a local chapter within a U.S. HUD-defined structure tied to federal dollars the department awards for providing homeless services), holds a couple of meetings today. Today is the deadline — as laid out in a court order — for the Los Angeles CoC to submit a memo to federal court Judge David O. Carter, amid litigation by local officials to stop the federal funding from being suspended, at least for now. HUD also has some obligations under the court order (including reviewing the CoC’s evaluation of applicants to replace LAHSA).
So here’s a breakdown of the two meetings today:
The Los Angeles Continuum of Care board, which is 21-members, is meeting at 10 a.m. this morning. They’re expected to go into closed session to discuss the litigation around the Trump Administration’s actions that have thrown the state of homeless services delivery up into the air, and has led to a competition between the city of Los Angeles and the county of Los Angeles to take some or all four lead roles on homeless services delivery. Think of it as a sort of a custody battle between two parties that have or are divorcing. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority is a “joint powers authority” and has essentially been a cooperative, a troubled “marriage” of now three decades, between the city and county, that is now unraveling.
And this meeting was scheduled after what would have been a highly consequential meeting of the CoC’s “general membership” that was abruptly aborted last Friday before they could take up any of the big items. Zoom capacity that was set at 1,000, was said to have been reached, and that meant the meeting could not go on.
While attendance can be limited in a normal Brown Act meeting, an attorney for CoC said, this was a “membership” meeting, and they couldn’t limit members from participating. Rather unusually, the definitely membership for the Los Angeles CoC, is incredibly broad, and could apply to just about anyone who is “interested” in tackling homelessness in Los Angeles (few knew about this over the years when the Los Angeles CoC was being treated more of an advisory panel that seemed to report to the LAHSA Commission).
The attorney, Shayla Myers, also said there would be another meeting set up, and indeed there is a general membership meeting now scheduled at 1:30 p.m. for today.
However, the two most contested issues — which likely drew the high attendance that cut-short last Friday’s meeting — are not on today’s agenda, even though they had been listed on last Friday’s. In other words, the two hottest items over which the city and county of LA have been jockeying to take the reins on, aren’t even being taken up anymore, at least for now.
And this is all cutting it close, because the Los Angeles CoC’s deadline for filing its evaluation of the applicants to lead homeless services is supposed to be filed to the court today, Oct. 13. The agendas for the two meetings at the Los Angeles CoC today do not indicate — in any straightforward or concrete way at least — that any additional decisions, other than an earlier decision by the CoC board to hand those roles to the highest scorer on the applications, LA County, would be made in time for today’s deadline.
A few more things for today…
The Los Angeles City Council is meeting at 10 a.m. today, and it’s taking up a plan to help small businesses survive in LA, including by lowering the threshold for getting support (such as grants) under the city’s “legacy business” program, and creating a citywide restaurant protection ordinance.
They’re also taking up a series of 2028 Olympics-related items, including an assessment of opportunities for small, local and underrepresented businesses, the status of the cultural Olympiad planning, the youth sports program, and fan events.
And City Council member’s Tim McOsker’s trip down memory lane continues with a motion on today’s City Council agenda that would revive an expired file from around the turn of the century (the year of 2002, that is) related to a so-called “decentralized regional district system” for delivering city services. Somewhat less opaquely, that proposal was described in a motion by then-City Council members Tom LaBonge and Janice Hahn as one that would divide the city up into seven regions. You’ll see a Council member Alex Padilla (now a U.S. Senator who went viral for his tortilla rolling skills and was unceremoniously yanked last year from a news conference shortly after an ongoing and intense campaign of ICE raids begin in LA) featured frequently in the file, but there is no relation to the current Imelda Padilla that’s now on the City Council.
And there’s also a motion listed that would transfer $200,000 between accounts to pay for “additional homeless services” in Council member Hugo Soto-Martinez’s 13th City Council District.
Also, Los Angeles city’s Board of Animal Services Commissioners is meeting at 9:30 a.m., and they’re set to hear an “oral report” on a Los Angeles City Council motion that looks at having an outside entity operate some of the city’s animal shelters as well as euthanasia decision-making at shelters that are beyond capacity. The city’s Board of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Commissioners is meeting at 10 a.m., and their agenda includes an item related to Pacific Palisades recovery.
What just happened?
‘You’re joking right?’ A big meeting on homeless services in Los Angeles is cut short immediately it starts, after it attracts more than 1,000 (mostly Zoom) attendees
What was seen as a highly consequential meeting, where anyone from across Los Angeles county who is interested in addressing homelessness could vote on who gets to be in charge of delivering homeless services, was adjourned almost as soon as it started, after more than 1,000 people — who likely considered themselves to be part of the entity’s loosely-defined membership — tried to attend over Zoom.
The LA Reporter was there in person, attending the entire three to five minutes of the “general membership” meeting of the extremely obscure (but seemingly open to all) Los Angeles Continuum of Care. The body’s board chair, Ben Kay, told attendees the meeting had to be adjourned because they had hit their 1,000-person Zoom capacity.
He gave this abrupt announcement after spending about a minute and half thanking people for the time and energy they took to get to the meeting, describing it as a “really important day” in which “consequential decisions” were before them.
“You’re joking, right?” someone from the audience shouted. After The LA Reporter got up and asked, “What is that [adjournment] based off of?”, Myers, the attorney who was advising the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, went up to the front of the room and gave this explanation:
“Zoom capacity is 1,000. In normal Brown Act meetings, there’s the ability to simply limit who is present. However, this is a membership meeting, which means we cannot limit the capacity. So at this point, because we have reached capacity on Zoom, and members of the CoC [Continuum of Care] are not able to participate, we have to continue this. We will do so, and we will build in additional capacity. And I think folks can understand that the capacity was set at 1,000, which is significantly greater than most capacity for any public meeting is usually set at. So. So thank you. We will adjourn. We will go through the normal notice to post the meeting when it can be held with additional capacity. Thank you so much.”
This only prompted people from the in-person audience, many of them made up of service provider officials, to suggest that the capacity could be increased on the spot, and that they could even help with that. “Just add, just upgrade right now,” someone said. “I can show you how,” someone said. Kay and others did not appear to take anyone up on this offer, and no upgrade was done. The LA Reporter fielded some unofficial discussion that revolved around concerns about needing to re-notice the meeting due the link to the meeting changing or other logistical, Brown Act-related complication. The validity of that kind of explanation would need further verification, however.
This all happened as the city has been competing with the county to assume two very consequential leadership roles – that of managing people’s cases and setting the criteria for how people are matched with services. The city did not apply for the two other roles on offer – that of doing the annual homeless count, and applying for funding from the federal government, specifically the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). LA County – which just stood up a new homeless services department – applied for all four roles, and scored the highest on the roles they were in competition with other applicants on.
And the high attendance on Zoom was attributed to Mayor Karen Bass’s office (as well as potentially other LA city leaders) sending around a text blast that urged people to attend the meeting and vote against the recommendation that Los Angeles County lead those important homeless services delivery roles to Los Angeles County.
While there was some speculation swirling that the volume of the turnout was aimed at shutting down the meeting, the idea that control of the case management (HMIS) and criteria setting (CES) roles could be handed over to LA County clear has not sat well at well with some LA city leaders. Any vote that would overturn the Los Angeles CoC’s decision to award those roles to LA County, had that happened (and if that was something that was actually possible to do through such a vote), could still be a wrench thrown into those plans. Several LA city leaders back in August expressed angst over losing control especially on the case files, in particular, although decision-making over how services or housing was matched to their constituents also seemed to worry them.
Indeed, well after the quick adjournment of Friday’s meeting, Los Angeles City Council members Tim McOsker and Ysabel Jurado, who had a concurrent meeting, arrived on scene at the meeting room, where many of the in-person attendees were still present and milling about. Jurado, in particular, appeared to speak up in frustration at one point, with some of the people there. She let loose the word “bullshit,” before storming dramatically out of the room.
Meanwhile, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who was still at the City Council meeting that Jurado and McOsker had departed from, who seems to enjoy fulfilling a town-cryer role during meetings (often breaking some big news) gave a report on the aborted meeting. “Folks should know the city showed up in force, both in person and online… the meeting got shut down by the board because there were 1,500 people trying to log online,” he said. “My impression of Zoom was you can increase the capacity with the push of a few buttons.”
Harris-Dawson also highlighted LA city leaders’ concerted mobilization efforts. “I just want folks to know our chairwoman, the mayor’s office, and this council, many offices did mobilization to the meeting, so we were able to show up in force and cause at least them to have to figure out when they have to meet again and make this decision,” he said.
Harris-Dawson, Jurado, Mayor Karen Bass and others also issued a joint statement about what happened, describing the meeting as breaking down after two minutes, and saying that Angelenos “were silenced today.”
As LA county’s bid to lead homeless services was being challenged by the city, a couple of supervisors responded with statements as well about the meeting and the city’s efforts to challenge their bid to lead homeless services.
“My priority remains ensuring these systems deliver for the people who depend on them,” read an emailed statement from LA County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, whose statement also acknowledged that city leaders are “entitled to pursue what they believe is best.”
LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who championed a push to withdraw local funding from LAHSA a couple years ago in order to create the new county homeless services department, put out a statement that notes they “have already committed to the city of LA that, at a minimum, they will maintain the HMIS and CES access they currently have working with LAHSA.” HMIS and CES refer to the two consequential roles that the city is also seeking, and that some city leaders say would allow the city to “share” roles over homeless services delivery, with the county assuming the roles of applying for funding and conducting the homeless count (which is actually used to help calculate federal funding, and is not really necessarily supposed to be a report card on LA leaders’s abilities to address homelessness, despite often being used that way).
Horvath’s statement also noted that there are more than 80 cities across the county, and that both LA and the other cities “deserve a say” on homelessness.
Meanwhile, the Instagram account of Los Angeles City Council member Traci Park, who has a 20-year background as a municipal attorney, responded to a post by Eric Langberg, a photographer who attended the meeting in-person as well, asking, “What in the actual kangaroo court was that?”
Mar Vista Voice, which previously raised concerns that LA city’s bid would play into the hands of the Trump Administration, put out a report on the aborted meeting with additional details about city leaders’ mobilization efforts. The piece also notes that “keeping these decisions local matters for the people who depend on the funding.”
“Trump’s July 2025 executive order calls for moving away from Housing First, expanding involuntary commitment and making assistance conditional on treatment for people with substance use disorders or serious mental illness. Those directives remain subject to existing law, but they signal what the administration wants: a shift away from providing housing without treatment requirements and toward coercion and institutionalization. Treatment is already an eligible use of CoC funds. The question is whether people can receive housing and care that meets their needs or risk losing assistance because they cannot meet prescribed treatment conditions. Local control gives the region a voice in defending access to stable housing and voluntary services.”
Justin Szlasa, a board member of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (the longtime agency that represents the “marriage” or collaboration between the city and county on homelessness), had forecasted in an August 21 LinkedIn piece the growing role of the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, which has long functioned in a role that was perceived as “advisory” but that has grown in power and importance amid the Trump Administration’s efforts to intervene in Los Angeles homeless services delivery system.
The fact that Karen Bass’s text blast mobilization forced the meeting to be aborted was also covered by the LA Times’s Doug Smith (who has reported for years on the homeless services system in Los Angeles) in a report published on Saturday.
And while some may look askance at LA city applying for those important roles, despite LA city’s 10-person bureau on homelessness that it had just set up appearing minuscule compared to LA County’s team of hundreds, LA city leaders noted in late September that there are some “unique” contributions that LA city as a “municipality,” can make – including it being able to understand the perspective of the other cities that Los Angeles county officials hope to also represent. LA city, which has faced but often lost on legal challenges to how it treats unhoused people (usually cities treat their own unhoused constituents very badly), has been forced more often than most cities to consider building housing and shelter (and to adhere to the rights owed to unhoused people) to respond to the homelessness crisis even as they faced down yet other constituents who complain about their unhoused neighbors.
Governance expert Raphe Sonenshein, who has observed the dynamic between the city and county over the years including on homelessness, told The LA Reporter that after a certain point, the now-feuding city and county will eventually have to figure out a way to work together because of the different strengths they both bring to the table.
Meanwhile, Robert Greene, a former LA Times editorial board member who has wrote extensively on LA politics and governance over the years, notes that there are “87 other cities” in Los Angeles County that are also “pieces to the puzzle,” beyond the oft-referenced LA city and county players.
Many more other things to catch up on…
The Sierra Club announced its endorsement of Nithya Raman on Monday, at a press conference timed with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Raman’s father, who attended and gave remarks in her place, said his daughter could not attend because she had fallen sick.
The LA Times’s David Zahniser examines how Nithya Raman’s stances have shifted over the years.
Homes in Long Beach are red-tagged after the peninsula is battered by El Nino fueled waves from Tropical Storm Rachel.
LA County Board of Supervisors meeting room is closed today “due to impacts from flooding,” but they said they did not have further information to provide. [Note: This was corrected to say the meeting room was closed today. I previously wrote that the meeting was cancelled, but it was previously cancelled.]
Reporter Jack Ross has a story in Capital and Main that offers an inside look – revealed through tenant lawsuits – of a “cash for keys” operation by K3 Holdings LLC, a Beverly Hills-based landlord.
LAist this weekend re-published an NPR story about concerns around Axon, which some jurisdictions including LA city are turning to after outcry over Flock-branded automated license plate reader systems.
The historic building of the former Crouch Memorial Church building on Paloma Street, in South Los Angeles caught fire for the third time. Fire department officials described one of the fires that occurred there in a 2013 fire that was particularly difficult to put out as being “deeply etched” in the department’s history. This fire broke out over a long weekend during which the LA city fire department held its annual firefighter memorial service.
There was a 100 year celebration of the Shakespeare Bridge that included a parade.
Mayor Karen Bass says September was the busiest month in the Port of LA’s 118-year history.
Libor Jany and Sean Greene of the LA Times offer an analysis of the $480 million in LAPD legal payouts since 2019.
Gustavo Arellano marks the four-year anniversary of the Fed Tape scandal that dethroned a number of power players in LA city politics.
ABC7 covers LACAN’s news conference calling Operation Skid Row a publicity stunt.
Thank you incredibly for this detailed report for particularly about everything having to do with the entire homeless circus. I'm incredibly saddened Elizabeth at the jockeying from Karen Bess that ruined even my participation in last week's meeting by Zoom. But it is simply Iconic that somebody who is homeless has absolutely no voice, and the primary reason for that are people in the LA City Government not the County. And of course I live in CD 11 where a homeless person is not only person non grata but is actively removed by any means possible. All of this is incredibly disheartening. But I thank you for keeping me up to date because I had missed some items and you and the LA Reporter have certainly brought me up to date.