A federal judge believes that Los Angeles City's homeless plan will be transformed into a takeover

The question seems simple: the use of the word “temporary” by witnesses is just a shorthand as a “temporary shelter?”?

But for the defendant's lawyers, it was a miscarriage to the law: “Dispute. Asking for legal conclusions. Calling for expert opinions. Relevance. Lack of foundations,” she interjected, prompting the judge to wear out and “deprived.”

More than 2,000 objections had held a high-risk hearing in federal court in the two weeks as early as this month, asking judges to decide whether to take unprecedented steps to seize control of the city’s homelessness program.

U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter ordered the parties to submit a written summary by Tuesday, and would then rule a group of business owners, property owners and residents to ask him to appoint a receiver that spends about $1 billion a year in the city, homeless each year.

In showing how far it will go to protect its authority, the city brought heavyweight law firm Gibson Dunn to take over as an in-house lawyer who had previously handled cases for five years. The company chaired a team of seven lawyers led by Theane Evangelis, who represented the grant city in the U.S. Supreme Court and won the decision to reopen the decision to invoke and arrest illegal camping for homeless people.

The defense team did not call for witnesses but raised the threat of appeal to the lawsuit, and the first objection of the day was rejected. The peak of the seven-day hearing was on the third day, when Carter rejected 440 objections, mainly speaking in almost unheard whispers.

Attorneys for the Los Angeles Human Rights Alliance believe the city violated the settlements reached in 2020 and 2022, requiring it to provide nearly 20,000 new “housing solutions” for homeless people and remove less than 10,000 camps from the streets.

“Breach and break, honor. That's what we're going to talk about today,” Los Angeles League attorney Matthew Umhofer argued. “The system is broken and requires extraordinary judicial action.”

Evangelis refuted the argument as serious inflation of fact and law.

“In short, the coalition attempts to turn this narrow process into a referendum on policy options related to homelessness in the city,” she said. “The coalition provides no evidence that the city cannot achieve its goals and cannot.”

The third point, the focus is on removing camps, portraying alliances and cities as insensitive to homeless people.

“Your honor, demolishing tents does not reduce camps,” said Shayla Myers. “When a city picks up a tent, it just means that in the heat of the day, there are no forgotten residents without any shelter. But it doesn't mean that a camp has decreased. It just means that people who have not forgotten have lost their property.”

The highly anticipated testimony that Mayor Karen Bass and two council members failed to achieve after Umhoff were reminded of an imminent appeal and therefore dropped out of the witness list.

Instead, the long-term testimony was broken down by almost constant objections, and it was zeroed in the solution agreement: What is the definition of the camp? If a couple gets a rent subsidy, would that count as a bed or two? What is the difference between “camp solution”, “reduce camp” and “demolish camp”?

A legend about how the case of escalating homeless people into attacks on the city’s basic powers was a 18-month legend of quarrel over settlement terms. In February 2024, the coalition asked the court to fine the city $6.4 million, alleging that it “stunted efforts to establish critical camp milestones and created much fewer beds than promised.”

Carter is often addicted to court monologues because of what he calls the failure of the “rock horror picture show” of the Homeless Services system, skeptical of sanctions, but grabs the coalition’s audit request. After a series of city court diplomacy, the city agreed to pay $2.2 million, a figure that later paid more than $3 million for an independent audit.

Released in February and renamed “Assessment” because the company underway for Alvarez & Marsal is not a certified public accountant, finding the city's homeless program is disconnected, lacking enough data systems and financial controls to make them prone to waste and fraud. Although it points to no specific fraud, it finds differences that suggest some beds are double-score and no documents that validate hundreds of existing ones are found.

The report is a reform of the three-year-old Los Angeles Homeless Services Department, which oversees the signing of homeless services in the city and county. In April, the oversight committee voted to transfer the county’s $300 million donations from the agency to the newly formed homeless department. Currently, the city insists on using LAHSA, but the city council voted in March to explore the establishment of a new bureau within the Ministry of Housing to monitor its performance.

Without moving Moore's Carter to May until May's repair of the broken system, he vowed to be the “worst nightmare” if she fails.

On May 8, the coalition filed a motion announcing that “after exhausting all remedies within the court’s mandate, there is no alternative but to take over.”

Carter ordered an evidence hearing, which began on May 27.

Alliance lawyer and former LAHSA CIO Emily Vaughn Henry opened. She testified that her homeless data system was “smoke and mirrors” and that her supervisor directed her to “do everything she can to make the mayor look good.”

Laura Frost, director of Alvarez & Marsal, testified that many of the data the company requested from the city were missing or never responded, so the company's analysts thought it did not exist.

“We found that the system was not working,” Frost said. And, in response to follow-up, “we don’t believe it is in the country, it can achieve large and meaningful homelessness in the city of Los Angeles.”

Two downtown residents proved that Skid Row's service was scarce.

“Daily life is survival,” said Don Garza, a frequent audience in Carter court. “People are struggling and dying on the gliding streets………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The alliance suggests that the city has plans to overload with permanent housing, spend more than other forms of housing, and take longer to build.

Los Angeles City Administrative Official Matt Szabo has firmly defended the city’s performance, especially its planned housing, which he said reflects voters’ willingness to approve a $1.2 billion proposed HHH housing margin.

In four days of testimony, Szabo firmly denied that the city had mistakenly reported any beds created under the 2020 agreement and insisted that the city would fulfill its obligation in the 2022 agreement to provide 12,915 additional homeless beds in June 2027. Szabo acknowledged that Lahsa has faced the problem of data collection. But he insisted that the city “has taken steps to ensure that the data we report are accurate.”

At the end, Umhofer reminded the judge from his own words from the 2021 ruling:

“'This court cannot be idle to witness preventable deaths. This worsening public health and safety emergency requires immediate life-saving action. The city and county of Los Angeles show that it cannot or is unwilling to design effective solutions for the homeless crisis in Los Angeles.'”

Myers, representing Los Angeles advocacy groups and Los Angeles Catholic workers, advocated willingness to provide part of the settlement agreement to provide housing, but opposed camp demolition and docking. She said the responsibility should be on the judge himself to ensure that the city creates all the housing needed in the agreement.

“To do this, your honor needs supervision,” she said. “It doesn't require a receiver, but verification and data. It requires more information, your honor, not your obligations about the city.”

In her closing ceremony, Evangelis invoked the grant case.

“It seems like the Supreme Court is talking about the process,” she said. “It's very complicated. No one has an answer. Of course, none of us can decide these huge questions here. It depends on local governments, elected officials and dedicated civil servants… not coalitions.”

She ends with the endless questions she says.

Among them: Is the recipient entitled to allocate funds from the General Fund in New York City? If so, at the expense of other priorities? Will the recipient control the Los Angeles Department of Housing? Los Angeles Police Department? Los Angeles Fire Department? Ministry of Health?

The case is now in the hands of a judge, whose commitment to his commitment to reducing homelessness and has repeatedly shown his willingness to act under certain threats from appeals.

Time worker Jack Flemming and David Zahniser contributed to the report.