Miss Smith, who is wheelchair bound, and Elizabeth Singletary talk about their lives after being displaced from the homeless encampment off of Crosier Street in Akron on Friday, April 4, 2025.
Los Angeles, California – Los Angeles’ approach to homelessness is “extremely broken.” According to a court-appointed audit and a federal judge, the control might be taken out of the city’s hands.
At a hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter scheduled a four-day evidentiary hearing for May 27 to determine whether the city has violated its legal obligations to build more shelter. Carter is considering transferring L.A.’s homelessness budget control to a court-appointed receiver — a drastic move prompted by doubts about the city’s credibility and performance.
A review released Wednesday by the auditing firm Alvarez & Marsal found that auditors could not verify the number of shelter beds the city says it has created, despite court orders requiring more beds. “One of the primary obstacles was the inability to verify the number of beds the City reported,” the review stated.
The judge called for the hearing to examine alleged failures under two key legal agreements: the 2020 “Roadmap” plan, which requires 6,000 new shelter beds, and the 2022 L.A. Alliance settlement, which mandates nearly 13,000 additional shelter or housing placements. The upcoming hearing will also examine whether the city inflated its encampment clean-up efforts and failed to provide documentation showing compliance with the agreements.
“This needs to start from the ground up,” said Diane Rafferty, managing director at Alvarez & Marsal. She described the city’s homeless services system as fundamentally dysfunctional.
Despite Carter’s request, neither Mayor Karen Bass nor Gov. Gavin Newsom attended the hearing — a move the judge called a “lost opportunity.” He criticized the city for shifting its legal stance, revoking previous permissions that had allowed informal discussions with top officials.
Instead, only one elected official showed up: Kathryn Barger, chair of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, whom Carter praised for visiting Skid Row with him.
Carter rejected the city’s request to delay the hearing and pushed back against its argument that the nonprofit L.A. Alliance lacks standing to challenge the city’s compliance. He emphasized that the Roadmap and the settlement stemmed directly from L.A. Alliance’s legal actions.
With a decision expected by the end of June, the judge clarified: “There’s an absolute expectation that we’ll be going forward.”
