On Feb. 27, 2026, LAHSA’s Interim CEO Gita O’Neill presented the LAHSA Commission with a plan to transform the agency into a central system coordinator that provides the glue to unify a fragmented rehousing system across Los Angeles County.
The plan outlines a clear path for LAHSA’s future within the region’s homeless response. By strengthening system coordination, improving accountability, and deploying housing resources effectively across jurisdictions, LAHSA will help the region move more people into stable housing.
With this in mind, LAHSA’s leadership understands that this transition requires more than a reduction in size. It requires an overhaul of its organizational model.
Focusing on System Coordination
For decades, LAHSA has functioned primarily as a service delivery administrator, managing hundreds of contracts and passing through large public funding streams to providers. LAHSA received increased funding due to Measure H and the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of this, the agency grew to match that responsibility.
That model depended heavily on County funding. But with that funding moving to a new department, LAHSA must evolve.
Under the new vision, LAHSA will focus on system coordination and accountability infrastructure for the country’s largest Continuum of Care.
What Is a Continuum of Care?
A Continuum of Care, or CoC, is a federally required framework created by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to ensure a region’s homeless response operates as one coordinated system rather than a collection of disconnected programs.
The Los Angeles CoC is the largest in the country, as measured by unsheltered population and federal grant portfolio. It spans 85 cities, unincorporated areas, and hundreds of providers.
As the designated CoC lead agency, LAHSA maintains the shared infrastructure that makes this system function. That includes operating the region’s data system, overseeing coordinated entry, administering CoC governance, leading the application process for the federal funding competition, conducting the annual homeless count, and reporting system performance.
Put simply, while individual jurisdictions administer programs, LAHSA ensures the system works as one coherent whole.
LAHSA’s Transformation
Following this new direction, LAHSA will shift from being an agency focused primarily on passing along funding to a centralized, impartial system coordinator responsible for maintaining the infrastructure that enables the region’s rehousing system to operate in a coordinated, accountable way.
LAHSA will focus on overseeing shared data systems, coordinated entry structure, governance framework, and independent accountability mechanisms.
LAHSA’s long-term model is now clear: a smaller, focused organization built around system coordination, data integrity, and transparent oversight.
Managing these Changes
This transformation is unfolding while LAHSA staff continue to operate the region’s homeless response infrastructure every day and while it transitions knowledge and staff to the County as part of that transition. Teams are managing contracts, maintaining the shared data system, conducting coordinated entry assessments, deploying outreach staff, and supporting providers across the county.
Continuity is the priority:
- All 7,000 interim housing beds will remain operational.
- Coordinated Entry will continue without interruption.
- Existing provider contracts will be honored.
- HMIS access and data integrity will be maintained.
Even as the organization restructures, the system serving people experiencing homelessness will remain active and stable.
As the region’s homeless response system continues to evolve, LAHSA’s responsibility is to ensure that data is reliable, access to housing is coordinated, and performance is transparent across jurisdictions. In a landscape shaped by multiple funders, political transitions, and federal uncertainty, stabilizing infrastructure matters.
No single agency can solve homelessness alone. By focusing on its role as a funder-agnostic system coordinator, LAHSA will provide the backbone that allows 85 cities and hundreds of providers to work as one. Together, we are building a more synchronized, transparent, and effective rehousing system that leaves no one behind.