LAHSA employees plead for help from LA County officials after layoffs announced
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority employees are pleading for help from county leaders, a day after the agency announced that nearly 300 people will be laid off by the end of April.
In an open letter addressed to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, the city council and the Board of Supervisors, LAHSA employees urged officials to prevent the looming layoffs and provide funding for the decision they believe will lead to further issues with the county's homeless population.
"We are writing to express our extreme concern for the way that this shift will impact our homeless service workforce as well as the people that we serve," the letter said. "These damages to LA's homeless services system will echo throughout our streets and communities. Ultimately, this will mean more encampments, more preventable deaths in the streets, and more individuals and families with no other option but to live in unsafe and unacceptable conditions. These are our children, our parents, our siblings, our elders, our neighbors, and our loved ones."
The employees are asking Mayor Bass and the city council not to reduce the funding for homeless services. On Monday, LAHSA officials said that 284 employees would be laid off by May 1, and that their last days with the agency would be June 30. They cited funding cuts from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who opted last year to pull $300 million in funding from LAHSA and shift to a county-run homeless department, the Department of Homeless Services and Housing, which launched in January.
After the layoffs were announced, L.A. County officials said that they remained committed to helping LAHSA employees transition to join the county workforce, if they chose to do so. They have still not established a specific number of employees they wish to hire, but the letter from LAHSA employees urged them to follow through on their commitment to hire 315 LAHSA-represented employees to county roles by June 30.
"Working collaboratively with LAHSA and SEIU 721 since November 2025, the County has offered employment to 69 outreach workers, of whom 68 have accepted roles, and of those, 27 have started roles across the Departments of Mental Health, Homeless Services and Housing, Health Services, and Probation," said a statement from a county spokesperson. "In total, 11 outreach workers either did not apply or withdrew from the recruitment process."
The county statement further noted that since layoff notices have not yet been sent to impacted employees, who could include city-funded positions, they are still working with LAHSA to determine further action.
The open letter said that despite the "complex and daunting" work that LAHSA employees do, they are beginning to notice the fruits of their labor and said that the progress they've recently made feels like it's all "being thrown away along with the livelihoods of the people who are making the greatest difference."
In a statement shared Monday to announce the looming layoffs, LAHSA interim CEO Gita O'Neill said that street homelessness had been reduced by 14% in the county and 18% in the city from 2022 to 2024, a time period in which they were able to provide permanent housing placements to 77,800 people.
"We urge you, Mayor Bass, City Councilmembers, County Supervisors, and members of the public, to protect our homeless services workforce," the letter said. "Our ask is simple: no loss of jobs during this monumental shift in our industry because, as severe as this crisis already is, it will only deepen if the workforce responsible for maintaining stability is not preserved."
L.A. County supervisors decided to pull funding from LAHSA last year after a series of audits criticized the agency's handling of taxpayer money. Days after the decision was made, then-CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum announced that she would step down from her role.
