#LAAlliance: City Defiance
L.A. Alliance for Human Rights is a registered nonprofit of downtown lawyers, property owners and developers that settled a lawsuit compelling certain homelessness “solutions” from the City and County
This piece is a collaboration between Ruth roofless & Zachary Ellison “Obama”, who are both independent investigative journalists writing about Los Angeles.
#LAAlliance sued Los Angeles.
A note on language: “L.A. Alliance” can casually refer to the settlement or overall situation of the City and County’s difficulty in addressing homelessness playing out in federal court. We use “Alliance” to describe the plaintiffs and their counsel.
Read the original complaint annotated by Ruth/roofless.
The lawsuit L.A. Alliance for Human Rights v Los Angeles was initiated in 2020 and settled in 2022, and the City and County are currently attempting to comply with the settlement agreement. Several compliance hearings took place in the Federal Courthouse on First Street throughout the month of March with Judge David O. Carter presiding. Mayor Karen Bass, Controller Kenneth Mejia and Council President Paul Krekorian have all testified with Judge Carter, who has ordered an extensive, independent audit be performed to fully account for past spending to address the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles.
HEARING TODAY Thursday, June 6th 10am
First St. Federal Courthouse, Courtroom No. 9C
Hearings are open to the public but not streamed or recorded besides for court transcripts of the proceedings, which are posted to the Central District’s website under “Newsworthy > Cases of Interest”.
The prominent lawsuit was not “won” or “lost” by plaintiff or defendant because it was settled. Despite this outcome, L.A. Alliance’s website boldly declares a “win” on their part. Calling a settlement a “win” is misleading, unless they weren’t actually trying to find the City or County guilty of the alleged human and civil rights violations in their complaint about the local government’s response to public homelessness.
The settlements themselves have no admission of responsibility (on the part of the City or County) for systemic harms and contain no curative element or monitoring component that specifically protects marginalized homeless people against continued discrimination. It only includes a general “dispute resolution” process, which does not yet appear to be functional, because Roofless has tried accessing it.
No responses for Ruth
Roofless has unsuccessfully tried to communicate with the plaintiff, judge and special master about grievances related to the lawsuit, like people being illegally removed from shelter beds that were created since the settlement. Roofless contacted L.A. Alliance’s PR agent, Daniel Conway (she has attempted to reach him about the settlement for well over a year) and Judge Carter’s “special master”, Michele C. Martinez, directly but did not get a response despite repeated requests.
Roofless reached out to the judge through his clerk, Karlen Dubon, and was told communication wouldn’t be accepted because it’s an “ongoing case”, even though it’s settled. Roofless asked for clarification on that but my question was not answered. The lawsuit has intervenors: the Latino Coalition of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Community Action network/Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles “LAFLA”, and infamous civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman, but no process for including the voices directly of the unhoused, who wish to have a say in the court hearings, some of whom have been appearing to observe the hearings.
PDF of online bizfile for L.A. Alliance through CA Secretary of State
The Alliance generally feels like the homeless people living in the public spaces surrounding their investments are costing them money from property devaluation, lost business and crime. The overall goal seems to be often more about bullying the City and County in court, securing taxpayer dollars for projects that critics have described as warehousing (such as Shomof’s proposed Life Rebuilding Center) and less about getting people humanely inside permanent housing, while still caring for those who don’t wish to leave the streets, and assuring that those once into temporary housing don’t fall out of the system again.
Map of plaintiffs, representative members and executives of L.A. Alliance: https://maps.app.goo.gl/BcMLuQMTjVA8Z4QF6?g_st=i
Is it coincidence downtown Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) have recently (new in 2024) re-branded themselves as “DTLA Alliance”?
In their complaint, L.A. Alliance’s lawyers question where all the money that has been spent on homelessness has gone. As an unsheltered person in L.A., it’s something Roofless often wonders about. How in such a wealthy place, with so much money budgeted, is the response to the crisis so bad?
But the L.A. Alliance fails to show how their perceived business losses are the City or County’s problem. Investing is supposed to be risky, and not always on the taxpayer’s dime. None of the Alliance members were under the impression that homeless people didn’t exist in DTLA when they acquired these assets. Several Alliance members live/lived in a large private religious shelter, Union Rescue Mission, where hundreds of homeless families reside nightly in exchange for a small amount of money for “savings.” Union Rescue Mission takes an expressly Christian stance in its approach to providing services.
The biggest issue we take with L.A. Alliance’s approach is that it focuses on enforcement rather than assistance in reliably securing permanent housing, giving the appearance they are actually working in tandem with the LAPD, because LAPD enforces the “anti-camping” ordinances in the City of L.A, including 41.18, which prohibits camping in certain areas and has resulted in needless signage and citations.
If L.A. Alliance believes housing is not currently available, and that shelter is also not usually practically accessible to unhoused people who want it, then they can’t possibly know what the streets would look like if it were available. The L.A. Alliance don’t know if they would even feel like enforcement was “necessary” to achieve the reduction in street homelessness they currently desire, because sufficient housing or shelter have never been the reality. This flaw in the logic of their complaint has yet to be addressed, and in our opinion is fatal to the standing of their argument, which otherwise contains many valid points, and falls under jurisdiction of the federal courts.
When Alliance Attorney Elizabeth Mitchell explained their position on former CD11 Councilman Mike Bonin’s podcast, “What’s next, Los Angeles?”, she made it clear that their fight was for clearing sidewalks and keeping them cleared with enforcement, above humans or rights.
This aligns with financial/police interest more than a Constitutional or Human Rights-centered argument.
Mitchell told the former Venice Councilman (who has lived experience of being homeless):
They [the Unhoused] lack agency.
Bonin pushed back:
The system disempowers people who are unhoused from participating in their own transition off the street.
He pointed out that there is no way for unhoused people to upload information into their own case files without a case worker doing it with/for them, and no way to check on the status of their applications or get an update on their progress in queues for vouchers, subsidies or beds.
This flawed logic runs so deeply into Alliance’s motivation, which argues that their interpretation of human rights, above even the language of the Constitution, guides their legal intervention.
L.A. Alliance’s counsel are attempting to compel the City to take drastic actions which enrich developers and nonprofits, and now they also want to get paid for taking the City and County to Court. In my opinion, they should not profit off this plan at all because they concocted it voluntarily and without any compulsion. There is no proof that they’ve saved a single life thus far, nor do they provide any services other than the lawsuit, a claimed act of public legal interest. Profiting off the death and suffering of others shouldn’t be something the Court enables even to the finest of attorneys in Los Angeles. It should raise a serious issue if clogging the Court up with frivolous litigation like this has simply become legal business.
Plaintiff’s Counsel (and agent) Elizabeth Mitchell
The main counsel and agent for L.A. Alliance, Elizabeth Mitchell, worked for the City Attorney’s Office for a decade as a prosecutor. Both Mitchell and L.A. Alliance chair/CCEA General Counsel Don Steier worked for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, as well. So, in a way, this lawsuit is kind of like the City/County suing itself. Or, more accurately, former lawyers for the City and County making nonprofits at the direction of real estate developer Izek Shomof to sue the City and County for the purposes of hiring private counsel (like themselves) and entering into an enforced legal settlement (that potentially benefits themselves). This is an inherent conflict of private/public interest.
Mitchell is also a donor to City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto having given her $150 in August 2022 before her election in November 2022. So, while the City did voluntarily enter this arrangement, the current administration of Mayor Karen Bass did not. In that sense, the settlement has carried over the wishes of our previous leadership under Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Court is trying to claim those are unchangeable. Legally, we don’t know how that can be justified! Perhaps the new Mayor Karen Bass could withdraw from the settlement and push for #LAAlliance to go to a new trial?
Perhaps a new whistleblower will emerge and take similar action! It won’t be a popular choice, but it might make an interesting chess-move in a land of kings and queens. Los Angeles, the city of the stars, but also of the powerful, and of so much despair and powerlessness.
U.S. Judge David O. Carter claimed victory in OC
An overpass in Venice wears graffiti stating “FUCK JUDGE CARTER” with zeal. Mainstream media, who have always seemed charmed by charismatic, double UCLA degreed David O. Carter’s actions, reported that he met and spoke with the artist/author of the work. He frequently outran poor journalists at the crack of dawn while he was working to eliminate homelessness from the riverbed in Santa Ana. After a series of lawsuits about homelessness there, Carter was removed from presiding over additional cases on the subject due to allegedly having a bias in favor of the unhoused. We’re less sure of this supposed bias?
A Santa Ana congregate homeless shelter called a “Life Rebuilding Center” which Izek Shomof is seeking to replicate in Boyle Heights was built as a direct result of litigation settled under Judge Carter. It commissioned a huge wraparound mural of his likeness in semi-psychedelic colors with a patriotic, cursive quotation: “THE HARDER THE BATTLE, THE SWEETER THE VICTORY” - How triumphant!
Ruth roofless has lived outside in the City of Los Angeles continuously for over five years. She attends public meetings about homelessness and exposes widespread programmatic corruption from within.
Zachary “Obama” Ellison is a whistleblower journalist who is writing an investigative journalism series about Los Angeles on politics, investigations and media.
Ruth and Zachary have teamed up to collaborate on a series covering the #LAAlliance lawsuit. We hope to expose the inner workings of the government real estate development world, and the impact felt by the people residing there.
🔗 Part 88: The LA Alliance Hearings Continue: Can The Homelessness Crisis Be Solved?
🔗 Part 91: Los Angeles Corruption Investigation Updates: Izek Shomof Versus Patrick Wizmann
Illustrations made from written prompts with @wombo’s free Dream.ai app for iOS
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