The Central District of California will oversee the enforcement of a multimillion-dollar settlement agreement that aims to care for the homeless of Los Angeles over five years.
The county agreed to commit $236 million to fund homelessness services while the city of Los Angeles will pay $74 million to acquire shelters and housing.
"The primary precedent this settlement sets is a political, moral, and policy one, which is that you can have a solution that balances the need for beds and services and you can have a role for a federal court in brokering a deal and in enforcing a deal because that's one of the key things we're getting out of this deal is a federal judge is going to enforce compliance with this deal," said Attorney Matthew Umhofer who is representing the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights (LAHR). "The city and the county have reporting requirements."
As previously reported in the Southern California Record, the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights sued the city and county last year alleging that negligence, a violation of due process, and discrimination have caused businesses near skid row to suffer with property values dropping due to a crisis in homelessness that was not being addressed.
“There was a lot of resistance on the county side to the idea that a federal court would have a role in addressing the failures of a city or a county concerning an issue as complex as homelessness,” Umhofer told the Southern California Record.
Attorney’s fees will be paid separately.
“We have more than $3 million in uncompensated time into this case and the settlement with the city is intended to reimburse part of that but that money doesn't come out of the existing pot,” Umhofer said. “We're still in negotiations with the county.”
In Los Angeles County alone, there are nearly 70,000 people experiencing homelessness compared to only 42,000 in the city of Los Angeles, according to media reports.
“They've considered hotels because they might not necessarily need to build all of it so much as they could purchase some of the property from existing stock,” Umhofer said. “The city will be emphasizing housing as opposed to shelters by just the sheer number of 10,000 units of housing and 3,000 units of shelter beds.”
The services that the county will fund with its $236 million allocation include job placement, substance abuse, and mental health but will start with outreach teams.
"The county has these teams that go out and identify people in need and try to identify appropriate housing, appropriate shelter, and appropriate circumstance services for them," Umhofer added. "The county is multiplying the number of those teams. They're called home teams and multidisciplinary teams."