A federal judge has ordered Los Angeles to pay more than $1.8 million in attorneys\u2019 fees and costs to the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights and other organizations that sued the city over what it deemed an inadequate response to the homelessness crisis.<\/p>\n
The city is appealing the decision.<\/p>\n
The details<\/p>\n
L.A. Alliance is a group of business owners and residents who sued the city and county of Los Angeles in 2020 in an effort to push both governments to provide more shelter to unhoused people in the region.<\/p>\n
Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n
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The city of L.A. settled<\/a> with the plaintiffs in 2022, and U.S. District Judge David O. Carter is overseeing the city\u2019s progress in keeping up with the terms of that agreement. The judge found the city breached its agreement in multiple ways<\/a> in a ruling last summer.<\/p>\n Specifically, the judge found that the city did not provide a plan for how it intends to create 12,915 shelter beds, as promised, by 2027. The court also found the city \u201cflouted\u201d its responsibilities by failing to provide accurate, comprehensive data when requested and did not provide evidence to support the numbers it was reporting<\/a>, according to court documents<\/a>.<\/p>\n In addition to $1.6 million in attorneys\u2019 fees and $5,000 in costs to L.A. Alliance, Carter awarded about $200,000 in fees and $160 in costs to the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and Los Angeles Community Action Network.<\/p>\n The organizations are considered \u201cintervenors\u201d in the suit, representing people experiencing homelessness on Skid Row. Their attorneys include those from the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Why it matters<\/p>\n In his order<\/a>, released Tuesday, Carter compared the recent award to the millions of taxpayer dollars city officials agreed to pay an outside law firm<\/a> representing L.A. in the settlement.<\/p>\n Carter wrote in the order that the attorneys’ fees and costs to L.A. Alliance and others \u201cis reasonable, especially in light of the approximately $5.9 million that the City\u2019s outside counsel is charging<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n LAist\u2019s housing and homelessness coverage<\/a> was cited several times in the order.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has fallen to plaintiff, intervenors, and journalists to point out the deficiencies in the city\u2019s reporting,\u201d Carter wrote, referring to data the city is required to report to the court as part of the settlement.<\/p>\n \u201cPlaintiff and intervenors must be compensated for this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The city\u2019s response\u00a0<\/p>\n Attorneys representing the city filed a notice of appeal<\/a> with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Thursday.<\/p>\n L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto\u2019s office did not respond to LAist\u2019s requests for comment by phone or email.<\/p>\n Shayla Myers, senior attorney with the Unhoused People’s Justice Project at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, told LAist the intervenors participated in the case without compensation \u201cbecause it’s incredibly important given what is at stake in these proceedings that unhoused folks have a voice.\u201d<\/p>\n Matthew Umhofer, an attorney for L.A. Alliance, told LAist he\u2019s thrilled the court is imposing accountability on the city, including sanctions for violating the settlement agreement. But Umhofer said he\u2019s saddened that L.A. Alliance is going to have to keep fighting to hold the city to its promises.<\/p>\n \u201cThe obvious city strategy here is hire a big, good law firm to fight on absolutely every front in hopes that the plaintiffs, the intervenors or the court will ultimately give up trying to hold the city accountable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n What’s next<\/p>\n The parties are scheduled to appear in federal court in downtown L.A. on Monday, when a hearing will resume to determine whether the judge will hold the city of Los Angeles in contempt of court<\/a>.<\/p>\n Carter has said in documents<\/a> that he\u2019s concerned \u201cthe city has demonstrated a continuous pattern of delay\u201d in meeting its obligations with court orders<\/a> under the settlement and that the \u201cdelay continues to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge has ordered Los Angeles to pay more than $1.8 million in attorneys\u2019 fees and costs…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":505105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-505104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115868397472961715","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}