Judge Cites Leadership Failure with Homeless: Orders Independent Monitor.

Judge David O Carter found the City misrepresented homelessness data.

(Editor’s note: this story “Federal Judge Faults Los Angeles for Homelessness Failures, Stops Short of Receivership” was printed in the Westside Current, June 25 and is reprinted with permission.)

BY JAMIE PAIGE

A federal judge issued a scathing rebuke to the City of Los Angeles this week over its failure to meet legally binding commitments to address homelessness, ordering tighter court oversight but stopping short of placing the city’s response under outside control.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, in a 62-page ruling issued Tuesday, found that the city repeatedly missed deadlines, misrepresented data, and failed to provide credible documentation in carrying out two separate homelessness agreements: a 2020 “Roadmap” memorandum of understanding with Los Angeles County, and a 2022 legal settlement with the LA Alliance for Human Rights.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in March 2020 by the LA Alliance, a coalition of residents, business owners and nonprofit leaders, accusing the city and county of failing to adequately respond to the homelessness crisis. The plaintiffs asked the court to impose a receivership—a rare legal measure that would have placed the city’s homelessness response under court-appointed control.

Carter declined to take that step. “The court is not a policymaker. It cannot be,” he wrote. “Its role is narrower, but no less vital: to uphold the promises made to the public, to enforce the agreements signed, and to ensure transparency and accountability in their execution.”

Instead, Carter ordered the appointment of an independent third-party monitor to audit and verify city data. He also mandated quarterly in-person hearings, beginning in November, to ensure compliance with the settlement terms. An updated shelter bed plan must be submitted by Oct. 3.

“The court wants the city to succeed,” Carter wrote. “Because when the system fails, people die. And when it works—even slowly—lives are saved.”

Central to the case was the city’s claim that it had created 6,700 shelter beds as part of its Roadmap obligation. However, a court-ordered independent assessment conducted by Alvarez & Marsal could not verify those numbers. More than $2.3 billion in homelessness-related spending could not be fully tracked due to poor recordkeeping, the audit found. The city did not provide complete data until after the evidentiary phase had ended—and only under direct court order.

The newly submitted spreadsheet, documenting 2,679 time-limited subsidy slots and 130 scattered-site beds, revealed instances of double-counting and false reporting. “The pattern is clear,” Carter wrote. “Documentation is withheld until exposure is imminent, public accountability is resisted until judicially mandated, and the truth of reported progress remains clouded by evasive record-keeping.”

The court ultimately did not declare the city in breach of the Roadmap or the 2022 settlement, but Carter said that decision “reflects judicial restraint, not confidence.” He noted that plaintiffs had “largely prevailed” in exposing systemic dysfunction, data opacity, and stalled progress.

According to court documents, the city missed several quarterly milestones for bed creation between 2022 and 2024, and its most recent shelter plan accounted for fewer than 9,000 of the 12,915 beds required by June 2027—leaving more than 3,800 yet to be built. In some quarters, the city opened less than half of the beds it had committed to. It also failed to properly update its encampment resolution data, counting efforts that did not involve any housing or shelter offers, in direct violation of a previous court order.

The court found that city officials had altered definitions of key metrics without approval, including classifying preexisting hotel and motel rooms as “newly created” beds without sufficient explanation.

Rather than addressing the issues raised in the Alvarez & Marsal audit, Carter wrote, city officials “fought the findings and methods of the court-ordered assessment” instead of “spending taxpayer dollars on finding the missing data or striving to provide verification.”

During a seven-day evidentiary hearing earlier this year, the LA Alliance accused the city of stonewalling, failing to provide updated plans, and misrepresenting its encampment cleanup efforts. Carter largely agreed. “At the heart of this evidentiary record lies a persistent problem: the inability to verify the city’s reported data,” he wrote.

In addition to the audit’s findings, the judge cited long-standing concerns about the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a joint city-county agency described in the ruling as being “caught between” two bureaucracies, limiting its ability to effectively manage homelessness programs. The court referenced more than two decades of government audits highlighting contract mismanagement, obsolete infrastructure, and leadership failures.

Carter also cited courtroom testimony from Mayor Karen Bass and County Supervisor Kathryn Barger. “I ran because I knew the system was broken,” Bass said. Barger concurred: “The system is broken.”

The County of Los Angeles, which signed its own 2023 agreement to provide 3,000 mental health and substance use beds and 450 new board-and-care subsidies, was not found to be in breach and did not oppose the court’s oversight.

In closing, Carter warned that the city’s future compliance would be judged not by promises but by results. “This case is not a referendum on homelessness policy,” he wrote. “It is a test of integrity, governmental accountability, and whether, in this city, the law can still serve life.”

Even though the Los Angeles Housing Services Agency is well funded, an audit shows those that need the help are not receiving it.