The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority announced Monday that it will lay off 284 employees, following Mayor Karen Bass’s budget proposal.
Despite a total increase in the city budget from last year’s $14.1 billion to nearly $15 billion, less than $800 million was proposed for homelessness spending in the 2026-2027 fiscal year,. This is down from the current $1 billion. Ahmad Chapman, the director of communications at LAHSA, told ABC7 that the authority currently employs 600 people.
Chapman declined to provide additional information and referred Annenberg Media to the press release published Monday.
In the release, LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neill thanked staff members for their “unwavering dedication and hard work serving people experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles County.”
“Our staff has been the driving force behind the historic reductions in street homelessness we’ve seen over the past two years,” O’Neill said. “Though our agency’s structure is changing, the monumental impact of their work—housing nearly 80,000 people over three years—speaks for itself.”
In response, homeless service workers are urging city leaders to maintain funding and protect jobs. Workers warned of the broader consequences of cuts to the system in an open letter addressed to Bass, City Councilmembers and County Supervisors.
“These damages to L.A.’s homeless services system will echo throughout our streets and communities,” the letter states. “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 letter also says that homelessness in Greater Los Angeles decreased in the past two annual counts — the first decline in six years — and argues that continued investment is critical to sustaining that progress.
Monday night, the letter included 290 signatures and included a link for additional supporters to sign. Some signees attached comments echoing their support, citing the damage layoffs will do to LAHSA’s work and urging leadership to be transparent with the employees being laid off. Some signees also said the layoffs put workers at risk of homelessness themselves.
Heather Varden is an SEIU 721 steward representing LAHSA employees and a community relations coordinator at the authority. She is part of a transition team working to move impacted employees into county roles while also representing union employees at LAHSA and aiming to retain jobs.
Varden was one of the signees of the letter. Along with her signature, she commented, “You cannot fix homelessness by destabilizing the workforce responsible for addressing it. For years, the County has relied on outreach workers, case managers, and housing navigators to do the hardest part of this work. ”
In an interview with Annenberg Media, she said official layoff notices identifying affected employees will not be distributed until April 30, creating widespread uncertainty among staff.
The last day of employment for laid-off workers is June 30, the last day of the fiscal year.
“It’s causing a lot of uncertainty within the workforce, because we do know that it will be around 300 people that will be laid off, but we don’t know who it will be yet,” she said.
According to Varden, L.A. County promised 315 alternative positions for displaced workers, but so far, only 26 offers have been made.
“We were really hoping that impacted staff would receive job offers before having to get a layoff notice, but that’s not what has been happening so far,” she said.
Varden added that many LAHSA employees have lived experience with homelessness themselves, making the stakes of job loss even higher.
“A lot of them who have experienced homelessness are now facing the uncertainty that if they lose this job, they could be in a space where they’ll have to seek services themselves,” she said. “We want to make sure that people currently living on the streets aren’t falling through the cracks and that our workforce doesn’t become the very population that they’re trying to serve.”