The Brief

Three top L.A. homelessness officials have left their jobs in recent weeks, LAist has learned.

The exits at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) include the executives who oversaw finance and data. Public announcements were not made about most of the changes.

The departures are prompting questions about why people are leaving and whether there’s now a leadership vacuum that affects oversight of homeless services, according to interviews with city and county officials.

LAHSA’s leadership “parted ways” with two of the three executives “after careful consideration,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement to LAist.

The staffing shakeup comes as homelessness continues to dominate as a key issue for the public, including in the March 5 election. The city council has authorized unprecedented spending to try and address the problems, and has acknowledged major data gaps that hinder the city’s ability to track its progress.

About 33,000 people live outdoors in the city of L.A. as of the latest count that’s available — a number that has spiked sharply in recent years, and that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has pledged to reduce.

Who’s out

The recent known departures started Jan. 22 with LAHSA’s top finance official, Kristina Dixon.

A few days later, on Feb. 1, came the exit of the agency’s data chief, Emily Vaughn Henry. She had a key leadership role over the agency’s crucial point in time counts.

And in recent days, the agency’s director of access and engagement, Brittnee Hill, departed.

“These are high-level, important positions,” said L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who’s on the council’s homelessness committee. She said she’s sorry to see these executives go, including Hill, whom Rodriguez said was working closely with her staff to connect people to housing.

Asked if LAHSA had informed her about the impact of these vacancies, Rodriguez said no.

“I have no indication or information that would help inform me what the circumstances or the impacts are going to be,” she said.

“There's always a lag when you have new people starting,” she added. “I have no clear insight on that.”

Vaughn Henry told LAist the loss of her job took her by surprise.

“It was devastating,” she said. “I did not expect this.”

The other recently departed executives — Dixon and Hill — could not immediately be reached for comment.

“[LAHSA CEO Va Lecia] Adams Kellum is committed to building a new LAHSA and looks forward to continuing to work with all of our partners to achieve our shared vision of bringing our unhoused neighbors home,” LAHSA leadership said in a statement provided by spokesperson Ahmad Chapman, regarding Dixon and Vaughn Henry’s departures.

Chapman said he was unable to say why LAHSA management parted ways with the two executives.

A nationwide search is underway for the top finance position, with Deputy Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Samson filling in on an acting basis in the meantime, according to the statement.

Data management will temporarily be overseen by Bevin Kuhn, a senior advisor for IT and data, while the agency looks for a permanent replacement, the statement added.

The departures come as the county is preparing to audit LAHSA’s finances and its annual point in time count of people experiencing homelessness, with an eye toward possibly restructuring the often-criticized agency.

LAist also reached out to spokespeople for the top local officials overseeing homelessness and LAHSA: L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, county Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, and Supervisor Kathryn Barger, all of whom sit on LAHSA’s governing commission; as well as the five L.A. city council members on the council’s homelessness committee: Nithya Raman, Bob Blumenfield, Rodriguez, Marqueece Harris-Dawson and John Lee.

The only elected official who commented was Rodriguez.

A Bass spokesperson said the mayor did not have a comment. Raman's spokesperson said the council member didn't have a comment because she's not involved in day-to-day operations at LAHSA. Barger declined to comment through a spokesperson, and Blumenfield's spokesperson referred comment to Adams Kellum "as she builds her executive team."

County plans audits

Two areas that were under the purview of the recently-departed officials — finance and the annual point in time count — are set to be the focus of outside audits recently approved by county supervisors.

“As Los Angeles County continues to combat the humanitarian crisis that is homelessness, every entity that plays a role in ending the crisis must be challenged, evaluated, and supported to ensure optimal performance,” states a motion by Horvath and Barger to have county auditors examine LAHSA’s finances. It was approved unanimously Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.

Horvath and Barger noted that the agency will be getting new financial leadership, and said the audit is meant to be helpful.

“The intention of this audit is to provide a clear and accurate picture of the financial health and practices of LAHSA to best inform incoming financial leadership and staff,” the motion states.

“Especially as executive financial leadership at LAHSA is changing, this audit will give incoming officers a head start on where to focus. We must dig into the details to expedite the homelessness solutions our communities deserve,” Horvath added in a statement Tuesday.

Adams Kellum, the LAHSA CEO, said she welcomes the audits.

“LAHSA is proactively making adjustments, including in key leadership positions, that will transform LAHSA’s financial infrastructure,” she said in a statement to LAist, adding they look forward to “working collaboratively and in partnership with the Auditor-Controller’s Office to improve our financial practices to serve our unsheltered neighbors better.”

‘Horrifying’ data problems

Problems with getting accurate data from LAHSA have long frustrated L.A. council members.

Vaughn Henry, as the agency’s former data chief, fielded questions from council members at a heated discussion about it in August.

During that meeting, council members learned the city may be paying for services that were never used, such as motel rooms that sat empty under a program they approved for $300 million.

“It’s just insanity,” Councilmember Rodriguez said at the time. “There's a fundamental problem with getting some very basic information here, and it's costing taxpayers millions of dollars.”

Council members were particularly frustrated by missing data points about people who leave Inside Safe, a signature motel shelter program launched by Bass shortly after she took office in December 2022.

The nonprofits that serve unhoused people are supposed to log when unhoused people exit the motel room program. But that requirement was not enforced by LAHSA, which contracts with the providers and manages the data system. The agency’s system allows staff to “bypass” disclosing whether a person has left the program, Vaughn Henry told council members.

That means the city might not know if it’s paying for empty motel rooms after people leave, council members were told by Mercedes Marquez, who at the time was the mayor’s top homelessness advisor.

“That's horrifying,” Councilmember Blumenfield said at the meeting.

“So we could be paying for weeks for an empty room, when somebody left two weeks earlier, and we could be using that room to house somebody?” he asked.

Marquez acknowledged that could be the case.

“If there was nothing else that was being done, you would be absolutely correct,” Marquez said in response to Blumenfield’s question.

Council member says data problems remain 'merry-go-round from hell'

In an interview with LAist on Tuesday, Rodriguez said the same type of data problems remain unresolved.

“I'm still on the merry-go-round from hell,” she said, repeating a term she used at the August meeting.

“I think there's still a lack of really clear, measurable outcomes that we can concretely say, in terms of measuring the costs associated with it,” Rodriguez added.

“That has been a really big challenge and frustration of mine, to just get very clear data points, on what we're paying for.”

Dan Shimell, an attorney and a new face in local politics, is Santa Ana’s next mayor after a shocking win against incumbent Valerie Amezcua. His win has become one of the most surprising upsets in Orange County’s general election and marks a shift for a city that previously elected its first Latina mayor.

Amezcua congratulated Shimell on social media late Monday night after the last round of election results nearly doubled Shimell’s lead. As of Tuesday night, Shimell held a 5-point lead over Amezcua. Amezcua did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment.

“It has been the honor of my life to serve the people of Santa Ana,” Amezcua said in a post. “Together, we have accomplished great things. We invested in our neighborhoods, expanded opportunity for families, and strengthened the services that make Santa Ana home. Our work was never about one person. It was about all of us moving this community forward.”

Aside from Shimell, progressives Sandra de Anda and Isuri S. Ramos are also projected to win City Council seats, deepening the Santa Ana City Council’s progressive bench.

A flashpoint in Amezcua’s re-election campaign was during the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that rattled much of Southern California, including Santa Ana, Orange County’s only sanctuary city. The raids sparked protests that drew a heavy law enforcement response from Santa Ana police, including rubber bullets and tear gas.

In Amezcua’s first public response, she accused protesters of inciting chaos and violence. She later walked back her comments in a city statement, saying most protesters were demonstrating peacefully and that she did not support the raids.

Shimell told LAist he thinks Santa Ana voters, especially young and first-time voters, went to the polls to vote for those who can't.

“Those who have been or might in the future be impacted by immigration policy and enforcement,” Shimell added. “Taking a bold stance on immigration and police accountability seemed to resonate with voters I spoke with, and stood in stark contrast to the [police]-backed candidates who remained largely silent on those issues.”

What does this say about Santa Ana politics? 

Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento served as mayor of the city from 2020 to 2022, and his current district includes Santa Ana. Sarmiento told LAist that the results were surprising but reflected the change voters want to see in their elected officials.

“I think the underlying message is that money and establishment conventional politics no longer is the formula to success in a campaign in the city,” Sarmiento said. “It's really the influence of people and voters over money. That's really the theme here.”

Santa Ana City Councilmember Thai Viet Phan told LAist that the race results were somewhat surprising — but spoke to a larger trend.

“[In] the election results throughout the country … you saw a very leftward shift, with not just candidates but also just how voters voted,” Phan said. “I think that was reflected here in Santa Ana on the council.”

Amezcua outspent Shimell — by a lot

Shimell raised about $28,500 in his campaign for mayor. Amezcua raised more than $75,000 and received more than $200,000 in outside support — more than half of that came from the Santa Ana Police Officers Association.

Mike Moodian, a public policy professor at Chapman University, told LAist that in many ways, the races capture the zeitgeist of Santa Ana.

“Here we saw that there was a police union-backed group, and there was a resistance to that,” Moodian said. “People might have seen the incumbent mayor as part of a police union-backed establishment."

He explained that voters may have looked at Shimell as a fresh face who can represent more people and that the city is experiencing a deeper progressive shift.

“I find the residents of Santa Ana tend to be much more involved and engaged in local politics than most other cities in Orange County. So you also have a well-informed, engaged citizenry that showed up, and the voices were heard in Santa Ana,” Moodian said.

Moodian said Amezcua may have lost support from some voters because they were unsatisfied with her response to immigration enforcement.

What’s next?

Ballots are still being counted. The OC Registrar of Voters posts updates every day, except Sundays, at 5 p.m. Election results will be certified by Dec. 3. You can find updates on key measures and other races here.

For seven years, Nazmul Chaudhry has been trying to get the city of Los Angeles to fix a broken sidewalk in front of his store.

Chaudhry owns Deshi Food, a restaurant and grocery store in Little Bangladesh. Before I could even begin our interview, he led me to the front of his store to show me the sidewalk that pedestrians sidestep and electric scooter riders slow down around.

He said he’s tried to get the attention of city officials, but nothing has been done.

The broken sidewalk in front of Nazmul Chaudhry's shop in Little Bangladesh.

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Yusra Farzan

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LAist

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He’s hoping that will soon change. He said then-candidate Nithya Raman spent time in the historic enclave just north of Koreatown this fall, talking with community members about their problems. For the first time since he moved to the United States in 1989, Chaudhry is excited about a mayoral election.

“Everybody's happy because we've never seen anyone [come] like that directly to us,” Chaudhry said.

Mayor-elect Raman is of Indian descent and an immigrant. When she takes office, she will be the first South Asian mayor of Los Angeles. Chaudhry is proud of that distinction. But what means more to him is that Raman spent time walking the streets of Little Bangladesh, visiting businesses and speaking to community members about their concerns. Chaudhry said that, because of that, he asked all his customers and family members to vote for Raman. At dinner parties, Chaudhry said, Bengalis would share how they were excited to vote for Raman in this election.

Nazmul Chaudhry and one of his customers, Mohamed Hassen. They both voted for Nithya Raman for mayor.

In the Little Bangladesh area, vote returns to date show Raman with a 2-to-1 margin over Mayor Karen Bass.

 "Hopefully she's gonna take care of the city," Chaudhry said.

His business has been hit hard after federal immigration raids ramped up in Southern California. People are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And for those who do come to his store, he said, they are met with increased prices because of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump's administration on imported goods.

Nazmul Chaudry offers a lunch buffet at his restaurant but he has seen a drop in foot traffic after ICE raids ramped up.

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Yusra Farzan

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LAist

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"Everybody's suffering actually these days," Chaudhry said. “If you see, Nov. 3 is a huge change because people [are] fed up."

Chaudhry also said city services don’t do a good job keeping the streets clean. So he takes it upon himself to pick up trash in front of his shop.

A few weeks before Election Day, Raman posted a social media video from Little Bangladesh addressing the trash along the street.

His relatives in New York told Chaudhry that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, also of Indian descent, has “changed the whole city.” He’s hoping for some of that change in Los Angeles when Raman takes office in December.

Shift away from identity politics

While Raman’s Indian background was a feature of her campaign, it was “not the central thesis,” said Sara Sadhwani,  an associate professor of politics at Pomona College and a senior researcher with AAPI Data.

In 2020, when Kamala Harris, also of Indian descent, was running for vice president, Sadhwani said, she conducted research on Indian Americans who wanted to see more representation in politics. In 2024, some of them turned away from Harris.

“When the economy is bad, identity slips away as the top issue on someone's mind,” she said.

Identity politics, Sadhwani said, was important in 2008 when the nation elected the first Black president, Barack Obama.

Los Angeles mayor-elect Nithya Raman poses for a photograph with family members after casting her vote on Election Day during the midterm elections at the Silverlake Community Church.

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Frederic J. Brown

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AFP via Getty Images

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“ We're ushering in a new political generation of millennials and Gen Z; diversity is just expected at this point amongst a vast majority of Americans,” she said, highlighting how at the last census more people identified as multiracial.

Nationally too, Sadhwani said, thec ountry is seeing a shift. South Asians have gone from “model minority” to “governing minority.”

”The old script was that for Indian Americans, for South Asians, that being that quiet professional is what success meant,” she said. “When we look at Raman and also Mamdani, they're fighting for executive power in very visible, very messy city politics, and they won not by following the rules, but they won by challenging the status quo.”

South Asians as a political force

That idea resonates with Faizah Malik, managing attorney for housing justice at Public Counsel and a former L.A. City Council candidate.

“When we were growing up, our parents said, ‘Just keep your head down, go to school, get educated, make a nice life for your family, and that's it,’” she said. “Politics was not really part of the conversation, but I think what we're seeing is that we can run for office, we can win by being our full selves.”

This is an exciting time, she said, for “South Asian political empowerment,” with Raman set to join Mamdani in leading the country’s two largest cities.

Malik said that, as a housing advocate, she cares about Raman’s fight “to build more housing around the city that people can afford, her fight to keep renters in their homes, to prevent homelessness, her fight to try and really solve our homelessness crisis but also be efficient with our public dollars.”

Nikita Chaudhry, an actor and political organizer, wants to see Raman revitalize L.A.’s film industry, “to call the city the home of Hollywood again.”

“Having that kind of representation and knowing that it exists is really exciting because I think and hope it will activate South Asian Americans of all ages to get more involved in their communities,” Chaudhry said.

Raman's and Mamdani’s victories were years in the making, Chaudhry said: from organizing in their communities to holding other elected positions to engaging voters who are otherwise ignored by elected officials. And she hopes that it will inspire other South Asians to become more involved in their communities.

“If you're feeling activated, if you're feeling excited, that's great," she said. "Take that energy and the time and the skills and the specificity of what fires you up towards your local organization, towards your neighborhood, towards your community.”

As the race to represent L.A.’s Council District 9 remains too close to call, candidate Estuardo Mazariegos’ campaign has accused the campaign of Jose Ugarte, the front-runner, of potential ballot tampering.

The Mazariegos campaign made the accusations Monday, saying it had filed a complaint with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. In a press release, the campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

In one case, Mazariegos’ team accused Ugarte campaigners of filling out a ballot on a voter’s behalf without her knowledge of who she was voting for.

“Taking people’s ballots, filling them out, and not following legal voter assistance guidelines in a district that has faced so much disenfranchisement is disgusting,” Mazariegos said in a statement.

Mike Sanchez, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said his office had forwarded the news release to the district attorney for review. He also pointed to the California Elections Code, which says that a “ballot shall not be disqualified solely because the person authorized to return it did not provide on the identification envelope their name or signature.”

Under California law, a voter can authorize another person to return their mail-in ballot — an approach also called ballot harvesting.

Justin Levitt, a  professor of constitutional law at Loyola Marymount University, told AirTalk Tuesday that there is no legal limit on the number of ballots an individual can turn in on others’ behalf, so long as they aren’t being compensated per ballot returned.

“Even if there were some sort of administrative wrongdoing, as long as there's no indication of fraud with the ballot itself, those ballots will all be counted,” he said.

Levitt said, however, that signing a ballot and then handing it to someone else to fill out would be illegal.

“ To the extent that there are allegations now that the DA may investigate, I suspect that's what they'll be focusing on,” Levitt continued.

The Mazariegos campaign also sent a collection of photos to the press, including one of a campaigner, USC student Amir King, returning a stack of ballots at a ballot drop box.

The Mazariegos campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

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Courtesy of Estuardo Mazariegos' Campaign

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Ugarte’s campaign responded to the accusations by pointing to a post by King on Instagram in which he accused the Mazariegos campaign of bullying him and making false claims about him.

“Why is he attacking me? For participating in our democracy, as is my right under California state law and for helping others participate in democracy, as is their right under California state law,” King said in the post.

As of Tuesday morning, just under 300 ballots separate Ugarte and Mazariegos, with 44,000 ballots left to count in L.A. County. It’s not clear how many ballots in Council District 9 are left to count.