Bass-led turnout surge crashes meeting to replace L.A. homeless outreach agency
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Set us as preferred It’s not unusual for a public meeting to be canceled for lack of a quorum.But there isn’t even a word for what happened Friday when a once-obscure board canceled a meeting to decide the future of homeless services in Los Angeles because too many people came to vote.More than 1,500 potential voters signed up for a meeting of the Los Angeles Continuum of Care board to pick a replacement for the core duties of the beleaguered Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.Under the board’s unusual charter, they all were eligible to vote merely because of their interest in homelessness.The onslaught was organized by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who sent out a blast message through her communications networks urging people to join the meeting via Zoom to vote down the board’s recommendation that Los Angeles County assume those duties.The response was overwhelming, but it didn’t work.Over cries of foul from those who came in person, the board’s attorney Shayla Myers announced the meeting was canceled because the Zoom channel had a capacity of only 1,000.Later, the board issued a formal statement saying, “The vote had to be continued today to ensure that all LA CoC members would be able to participate, given an unexpectedly high number of individuals who joined the online meeting.”Bass and four City Council members then put out a statement lambasting the board for a failure that disenfranchised members.“Without collaboration and transparency, management of this complex issue will continue to falter, and worse, our unhoused neighbors will continue to suffer,” the statement said.The cancellation deepens a crisis over the region’s federally mandated homelessness functions.
At stake is control over the annual homelessness count, the database that tracks every interaction with homeless people, the match...