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Judge finds Los Angeles failed to meet obligations for homeless residents
Mayor Bass, VP Vance trade barbs over immigration raids
By Fred Shuster, City News Service
joet@beaconmedianews.com
A
federal court judge has determined that the city of Los Angeles failed to meet its obligations under a settlement agreement with the LA Alliance for Human Rights and must provide an updated plan detailing how it will create 12,915 beds for homeless residents within two years, according to court papers obtained Wednesday. In an order filed Tuesday by U.S. District Judge David Carter, the judge wrote that the city has shown "a consistent lack of cooperation and responsiveness — an unwillingness to provide documentation unless compelled by court order or media scrutiny." The judge stopped short of finding that the city breached the agreement on the whole and declined the "last resort" of appointing a receiver to enforce the city's compliance with the lawsuit settlement, as requested by plaintiffs. But the court did institute a "monitor" to oversee compliance "and ask the hard questions on behalf of Angelenos," the judge wrote. The order comes after a seven-day evidentiary hearing in which the LA Alliance, a coalition of business owners
An encampment lines North Main Street near Los Angeles City hall in 2021. | Photo courtesy of Ron Reiring/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
and residents of the city and county, alleged that the city's refusal to provide updated plans, meet its milestones, correct its encampment reduction numbers, and verify its reporting has unnecessarily and unfairly wasted the resources of the parties and the court. The judge largely agreed, finding that rather than spending taxpayer dollars on finding the missing data
or striving to provide verification, the city fought with the findings and methods of a court-ordered independent assessment. A request for comment from the City Attorney's Office was not answered after regular office hours. The case started in March 2020 when LA Alliance filed a complaint in Los Angeles See Homeless Page 11
federal court against the city and Los Angeles County accusing them of not doing enough to address homelessness. A judge signed off on a settlement in September 2023 in which the county agreed to supply an additional 3,000 beds for mental and substance abuse treatment by the end of next year and subsidies for 450 new board-and-care beds. The LA Alliance filed papers alleging the city was not meeting its obligations. The independent assessment filed in March was unable to verify the number of homeless shelter beds the city claims to have created. According to the LA Alliance, the study revealed Los Angeles' homeless response to be burdened with antiquated systems, obsolete data infrastructure, contracts lacking accountability and leadership either unwilling or unable to correct course. "At the heart of this evidentiary record lies a persistent problem: the inability to verify the city's reported data," according to the order, which granted
By Joe Taglieri
V
ice President JD Vance and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass continued the war of words on immigration enforcement Friday, as the vice president toured the region amid ongoing deportation raids that have sparked frequent and sometimes violent protests. Bass disputed Vance's claims that she and Gov. Gavin Newsom incited violent protests and encouraged illegal immigration. "The vice president of the United States spent three or four hours in LA before holding a press conference and spewing lies and utter nonsense in an attempt to provoke division and conflict in our city," Bass told reporters at City Hall. "This is consistent with the provocation from Washington that began two weeks ago when our city was calm and millions of Angelenos were going about working and contributing to our city," she said. "The provocation has resulted in lives disrupted, terror and fear spread throughout our city." The Trump administration has blasted Newsom and Bass for "sanctuary"
immigration policies and accused them of hindering federal operations to enforce immigration laws and arrest people living in the country illegally. Vance did not mince words during his media event Friday after a tour of the Federal Joint Operations Center in Los Angeles. "You had people who were doing the simple job of enforcing the law, and they had rioters egged on by the governor and the mayor, making it harder to do their job," Vance said during remarks at the federal facility, flanked by officials from the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office, the U.S. Marines and other federal agencies. "That is disgraceful, and it is why the president has responded so forcefully to what happened in Los Angeles," Vance said, adding that the atmosphere in LA County was like "open season on federal officers." Citing feedback he has received from law enforcement officers, "Every single single one of them said they feel like the local leadership — the mayor and the governor — are encouraging
See Immigration raids Page 24
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