The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority will issue layoff notices to 284 employees on April 30 as the agency undergoes a sweeping restructuring driven by the county's decision to pull more than $300 million in annual funding and stand up its own homelessness department.
LAHSA notified SEIU Local 721, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the mayor of Los Angeles and the state of California of the planned layoffs in compliance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. Affected employees — 216 union-represented workers and 68 non-represented staff — are projected to have their final day of employment on June 30, coinciding with the end of the current fiscal year.
The cuts are part of a broader elimination of 414 positions in total, 130 of which are currently vacant.
"I want to profoundly thank our staff for their unwavering dedication and hard work serving people experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles County," Interim CEO Gita O'Neill said in a statement. "Though our agency's structure is changing, the monumental impact of their work — housing nearly 80,000 people over three years — speaks for itself."
A final determination on how many employees may ultimately be retained depends in part on the City of Los Angeles budget, which is expected to be finalized in early June.
LAHSA, a joint city-county agency created in 1993, says its workforce achieved several measurable milestones in recent years despite the upheaval surrounding the organization. The agency reported two consecutive years of overall reductions in homelessness countywide, including a 14% reduction in street homelessness across Los Angeles County and an 18% decrease within city limits. From 2022 to 2024, LAHSA staff facilitated 77,834 permanent housing placements, with a 24% annual increase in 2024 compared to 2022.
"The historic milestones we have achieved are a direct result of the relentless dedication of LAHSA's workforce," said Amber Sheikh, chair of the LAHSA Commission. "What matters most right now is reshaping LAHSA to provide uninterrupted support for the service providers on the frontlines every single day."
Going forward, O'Neill has said LAHSA will transition into what she described as "a fundamentally different organization" beginning in July 2026, narrowing its focus to macro-level governance and federal funding operations. The agency's revised mission will center on operating the Homeless Management Information System and the Coordinated Entry System, leading the annual Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, overseeing Continuum of Care governance and managing the annual federal Notice of Funding Opportunity competition. Its contracting and program oversight role will be refocused primarily on serving the city of Los Angeles. LAHSA has engaged consulting firm KPMG to help rebuild and optimize its financial infrastructure.
The restructuring caps years of mounting criticism, audits and leadership turmoil that eroded confidence in the agency among county and city officials alike.
In November 2024, the Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller identified 16 deficiencies at LAHSA, including late payments to service providers and $50.8 million in unrecovered Measure H cash advances issued since fiscal year 2017-18, of which only $2.5 million had been recouped. A court-ordered audit, released in March 2025, reviewed roughly $2.3 billion in agency spending from June 2020 through June 2024 and found what it described as "nearly zero financial oversight or accountability," concluding that LAHSA had failed to verify whether invoiced services were actually provided. The $2.8 million audit was commissioned by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter in connection with the 2020 L.A. Alliance for Human Rights lawsuit.
On April 1, 2025, the Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 — with Supervisor Holly Mitchell abstaining — to pull county funding from LAHSA. Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Kathryn Barger led the effort. The county's new Department of Homeless Services and Housing launched Jan. 1, 2026, with an $843 million budget approved in February, largely funded by Measure A, a half-cent sales tax projected to generate roughly $1 billion annually.
The agency's annual Point-in-Time homeless count has also drawn scrutiny. A 2025 RAND Corporation study found LAHSA undercounted unsheltered residents in Hollywood, Venice and Skid Row by 26% in 2024 and 32% in 2025, casting doubt on reported countywide declines.
Leadership instability has compounded the agency's challenges. Executive Director Heidi Marston resigned in April 2022. Her successor, Va Lecia Adams Kellum — a former St. Joseph Center CEO and Mayor Karen Bass ally — announced her own resignation in April 2025 after a report that she had signed a $2.1 million contract with a nonprofit employing her husband. O'Neill has served as interim CEO since Adams Kellum's departure.