Los Angeles committee urges quick county input on Measure A local solutions fund, stresses data and accountability

The Homeless Strategy Committee of the Los Angeles City Council on Feb. 12 reviewed options for the county'administered Measure A Local Solutions Fund and recommended that the county adopt a two‑year average of the point‑in‑time count when allocating local solutions funding.

Committee Chair (unnamed in transcript) said the committee must provide timely feedback so the county can finalize a formula before the county'set deadline in about two weeks. "The deadline to provide input to the board of supervisors on the formula that we want for that is rapidly approaching," the chair said.

Why it matters: the Local Solutions Fund is a minimum (proposed) 15 percent carve‑out of Measure A to be distributed to cities and other jurisdictions. How those dollars are allocated will affect where shelter, interim housing and services are funded across Los Angeles County and can change incentive dynamics for jurisdictions and providers.

John Wickham of the Chief Legislative Analyst'(CLA) office presented the CLA/CAO and Los Angeles Housing Department recommendation to select "alternative 1," a two‑year average of the point‑in‑time count, rather than other formulas that the CLA said could shift money toward more affluent cities rather than to areas with larger visible homeless populations.

Wickham said the housing department supported the two‑year option because it smooths short‑term volatility. He added the department is open to a three‑year average for future allocations to reduce allocation volatility further. "If you used three years, you would be running into the COVID era homelessness data and that might be shifting things in a really odd way," Wickham said.

Committee members pressed that any allocation methodology must be paired with clear data and reporting requirements. The chair and other committee members said the city must be able to see where people who occupy shelter beds come from and how Measure A dollars are spent, so the city can assess whether funds support housing in place or encourage moving people between jurisdictions.

Sarah Solon, a consultant working with the CAO on performance targets, told the committee the city needs common data points from funded interventions and suggested dedicating some of the Measure A accountability and research dollars so local jurisdictions, including the city, can get timely operational data. "We cannot coordinate and do better and make these dollars more efficient unless we have that information," she said.

LAHSA data staff and CLA representatives described ongoing efforts to reconcile occupancy and placement data across LAHSA, LAHD, HACLA and county DHS so the city can produce monthly reports showing where people were housed relative to city boundaries and how quickly units lease up.

Next steps: the CLA/CAO indicated the city will prepare formal comments and a resolution to send to the county within the two‑week window the county set for feedback on the Local Solutions Fund methodology. Committee members asked staff to return with a recommended data set and format so the city can demand consistent reporting and faster access to system performance data.

Ending: Committee members said the data work will inform the city's Measure A comments and future budget and program decisions; the CAO and CLA agreed to draft the city's input to the county and to bring more detailed proposals on data and accountability back to the committee.