How Karen Bass is using a charity to prevent more Angelenos from becoming homeless

Karen Bass’ campaign to eradicate homelessness in California’s largest city features several defining aspects that none of her mayoral predecessors tried: She has made herself accountable for results, she has devoted her full and sustained attention to it, and she has tapped the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles to help drive the response.

It is part of the Los Angeles leader’s call to address the problem holistically, and it is — however tentatively — working.

The Mayor’s Fund is not Bass’ invention. The charity was created more than a decade ago by Mayor Eric Garcetti, who used it to strengthen city services with private partnerships and help advance his agenda. It was particularly useful during the all-consuming response to COVID-19.

Running a major city effort outside the normal structure of government has attracted some ethical concerns, and the fund has adopted rule changes to make sure it’s operating cleanly. With those issues thus addressed, Bass has turned the organization into a limber vehicle for leading what is in some ways the most complicated aspect of the homelessness crisis: prevention.

To spearhead that effort, Bass turned to Conway Collis, a respected veteran of Los Angeles public service with a lifelong commitment to combating poverty and its many manifestations and effects. In turn, Collis has reoriented the Mayor’s Fund into Bass’s principal vehicle for stemming the influx of newly homeless people.

In March 2023, just after Bass took office, Collis directed the Mayor’s Fund to focus on keeping Angelenos in their homes, primarily intervening to prevent renters from being evicted. That was a matter of sudden urgency, as evictions that had been forestalled by COVID-era prohibitions were being lifted.

“It was clear that the preventive piece was not being dealt with,” Collis told me last week. And so, the nonprofit moved beyond acting as a fundraising vehicle and instead developed its own program of action. 

Initially working out of a City Hall office, the fund identified areas of the city where evictions were concentrated. As it focused on those neighborhoods, it also recruited lawyers to provide pro bono assistance to anyone facing eviction, and it developed a “benefit navigator” to identify federal and state assistance that might be available to renters at risk of losing their home.

The fund spread the word in at-risk areas, connecting with some 411,000 Angelenos in its first year. That’s both impressive and, in some ways, a wasted effort, as the vast majority of people did not require its services. Over time, however, the fund has deepened its knowledge about evictions and those at risk of them — it now confidentially collects information about tenants who have received “unlawful detainer” notices, the first step in evictions.

That has helped to focus the work, and the results are plain. Where the fund’s hotline once received about 35 calls a day, it is now fielding twice that. To date, the fund has provided assistance to 23,000 people who had faced eviction but are now in a stable housing situation.

Even in the soul-deadening scope of homelessness in Los Angeles, that is a notable number. Some 75,000 people are without housing every night in Los Angeles County, so keeping 23,000 in their homes significantly limits the size of the crisis.

The fund has encountered challenges. Its offer of legal services, for instance, has been welcomed by many who contact it, but the numbers far exceed what its pro bono lawyers can provide. Collis says the organization is working on ways to expand its legal assistance. 

Moreover, the idea of a homeless operation under the mayor’s direction but outside the normal checks of government offers at least the possibility of worrisome conflicts. 

Imagine that you were a wealthy person in Los Angeles, and you wanted some favor from Mayor Bass for work that requires city approval. You could donate to the Mayor’s Fund, without the restrictions of contribution limits, and know that you were winning her appreciation. It would not be a campaign contribution and thus not subject to those limits or regulations.

Recognizing the potential for conflicts of interest, the fund last year adopted internal rules limiting its fundraising: No developers or lobbyists, for instance, are allowed to contribute to the fund; all contributions are publicly reported; and no person or company with pending city business or contracts may contribute. 

Self-regulation and public reporting may prevent or at least minimize the risk of conflicts, but the role of the fund does beg a question: Why not simply create a city agency or office to do the prevention work that the fund has taken on?

“We can turn on a dime,” Collis said. “And that’s exactly what we’ve done.”

Indeed, the speed with which the Mayor’s Fund has refocused its efforts, stepped up fundraising and built up services, including the navigator, are sharply in contrast to the city and county’s lumbering efforts to grapple with these issues. 

“We can turn on a dime. And that’s exactly what we’ve done.” 

Conway Collis, Mayor’s fund of Los ANgeles CEO and president

The city of Los Angeles is not known for its speed or quick response time. It is a place where good ideas can languish for months or years, time that Bass is unwilling to waste in response to an unfolding human tragedy that claims lives every day. 

Emphasizing its independence from city government, the fund moved from City Hall to the offices of the California Endowment, where it is now located. Speed, said Collis, is paramount.

“People are becoming homeless as we are having this conversation,” Collis asserted. 

The challenge is always changing. Just last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom startled many who work in this field by issuing an executive order directing state agencies to “move urgently to address dangerous encampments while supporting and assisting the individuals living in them.” 

That followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld an ordinance in Grants Pass, Oregon, that levied fines when people camped outside in the city.

Newsom’s order does not have much direct impact on Los Angeles, where officials say most unhoused people accept offers of a place to live. They do not, therefore, require authority to forcibly break up encampments, as Newsom’s order permits and even encourages. 

But if other cities around Los Angeles adopted a more coercive approach — threatening homeless people with fines or arrests — that could push more people into the city, a prospect that Bass has warned against. 

“The mayor is doing this the right way,” Collis noted. “Very, very few people refuse to go.”

The solutions to homelessness are exceedingly difficult to execute, but they are not that hard to articulate. As Collis emphasized, combatting homelessness means preventing it where possible, finding temporary housing and services for those who need it, and “building a hell of a lot of new housing.” 

The Mayor’s Fund will not solve all those issues, but it is making a significant difference on one of them.