Key Takeaways from the Homeless Sector Virtual Town Hall

Over 600 Angelenos gathered for a highly impactful webinar created to help reshape the future of Los Angeles’s homelessness response by asking the hard questions. In collaboration with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), the Executive Committee for Regional Homeless Alignment (ECRHA), and the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency (LACAHSA), United Way of Greater Los Angeles, the Greater Los Angeles Coalition on Homelessness, and St. Joseph Center co-hosted its first Homeless Sector Virtual Town Hall. Its purpose is to provide shared dialogue to address the shifts happening across the sector. If you couldn’t join us online, this article explains why the full recording above is worth your time.

The Need for Change

Hazel Lopez, Director of Crisis Solutions at United Way of Greater Los Angeles, started the discussion by asking a critical question: What is happening in the homeless sector? So far, there’s been a deep cloud of uncertainty hovering. In the past few months, there have been governance changes, fiscal deficits, and agency restructurings, many of which have left many service providers wondering what comes next. By naming the elephant in the room, Hazel lays out the intention for the town hall. It served as an opportunity to create a line between frontline workers and those leading the charge at the county, city, and regional levels.

Dr. Ryan Smith, President and CEO of St. Joseph Center, opened the town hall by acknowledging the changes throughout the Los Angeles homelessness response system. Although the changes bring challenges, they also bring opportunities. By setting the tone of the rest of the webinar, Dr. Smith emphasized the need for collective engagement through transparent communication to ensure that system reform is shaped by those who work on the ground. The hosts of this call acknowledged that this is just the beginning of a critical step towards reimagining coordination, accountability, and impact in the homeless sector.

Jerry Jones, Executive Director at the Greater LA Coalition of Homelessness, expressed appreciation for frontline providers and others who attended the town hall. He appreciated the turnout for this event, calling it a signal for both engagement and recognition of the concern that has led to it. It amplifies the importance of ensuring service providers are involved in policy decisions.

A New County Department of Homeless Services

Cheri Todoroff, Executive Director of LA County’s Homeless Initiative, walked us through forming a new county department that will launch in January 2026. The purpose of this department is to realign fragmented systems by integrating Housing for Health and the Homeless Initiative efforts. This would also mean eventually integrating key functions from LAHSA. With this change, concerns about continuity, equity, and communications exist. Interested individuals can follow updates and provide feedback on the L.A. County’s Chief Executive Office website.

“The county’s goal through this new department is to deliver an integrated system of care connecting housing, case management, substance, use, disorder, treatment, physical and mental health services and income and other supports.”

– Cheri Todoroff

Homeless Prevention with LACAHSA

Tommy Newman, LACAHSA’s Chief of Staff, explained that this agency doesn’t fund direct homeless services but instead invests its resources in homelessness prevention, renter protections, and the creation of affordable housing. A projected $114 million will go into preventions and renter protections in the upcoming year alone. LACAHSA plans to open opportunities to stabilize housing and create equitable access to housing across Los Angeles County.

“We need more capacity at the local level. Some folks probably remember back to the days of the community redevelopment agencies and the really important role that they played in building capacity, building, understanding, helping to implement, helping to move forward big ideas. And so the technical assistance component is really important, too. And we’re really excited about bringing that together.”

– Tommy Newman

A Standardization of Care

Kristen Aster, newly appointed Executive Director of ECRHA, shared a plan to create shared metrics to establish a standardization of care. Having a standard that every agency follows isn’t the intention of creating bureaucracy but of ensuring everyone receives the same dignified service regardless of location.

“At the core of this, this is saying that we all know homelessness is a regional issue, and knows no jurisdictional borders. Right? And at the end of the day, we want to have a system where, no matter where you are in the county, that you can have some minimum expectations about the type of standards of services you’re going to receive and the connections you’ll be making to care.”

– Kristen Aster

Budget Cuts

Rachel Johnson, LAHSA’s Chief of Staff, announced that $100 million in budgets have been cut due to expiring one-time funds and other deficits. The programs affected by these cuts include interim housing, time-limited subsidies, CES regional coordination, and HAP 6 funding delays. As a result, LAHSA is prioritizing housing retention and pausing new enrollment in some programs.

“You know, we are facing this precarious situation in this time. There’s also amazing work that’s been done, and we see the result of that. We are now at our second year of seeing the homeless count go down. That’s unprecedented.”

– Rachel Johnson

A Quarterback for Los Angeles

Councilmember Nithya Raman, Chair of LA’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, acknowledged that the city lacks the infrastructure to oversee and deliver social services. Knowing this, Raman also provides a solution that aligns with the overall theme of the town hall. The city will operate more efficiently with a centralized homelessness bureau that will unify contracts, collect performance data, and serve as the lead liaison between city and county systems. She urged providers to lean into conversations about oversight so that funds are protected and credibility upheld.

“ I’m hopeful that actually putting more resources into one place that’s actually charged with oversight over the city’s homelessness, investment and homelessness. Response can get us to a system that’s both working better for the people who are living on the street, but also a better partner to the homeless services community, the provider community that is working alongside us and with us in partnership with us to achieve these goals, and that you’ll find us to be a much kind of much more responsive and a kind of a productive partner in in this work.”

– Nithya Raman

Next Steps

The emphasis of this call was that this discussion is only the beginning. It takes action to create the system that Los Angeles and Los Angeles County are proud of. This conversation is not about waiting for change but shaping it through these meetings and spaces like this. If you care about the future of homelessness services in LA, please watch the full webinar and share it with your team. The presentation is also available for download.