Officials Meet on Homeless : City, County, Agency Representatives Try to Coordinate Efforts

In an unusual gathering aimed at coordinating efforts to assist the homeless, more than 30 city, county and nonprofit agency officials, including Mayor Tom Bradley and County Board of Supervisors Chairman Deane Dana, met Friday in a private 2 1/2-hour session.

Several new ideas were broached, including a proposal by Bradley to establish a series of regional, one-stop service centers to aid the homeless, and government leaders said they recognized the need to continue working together to solve the growing problem of the homeless in Los Angeles.

A follow-up session in which representatives of each agency will discuss the proposals in greater detail was tentatively scheduled to be held within the next month.

‘That’s Appalling’

“One of the problems in taking care of the homeless is that there has been a lack of cooperation between the city and the county governments. That’s appalling,” said county Supervisor Ed Edelman at a news conference later outside the session room at Arco’s downtown office tower.

“What we have here is a common goal of helping the homeless,” continued Edelman, who proposed the creation of a countywide homeless task force. “Hopefully out of this meeting today . . . we can set up ongoing coordinated efforts.”

Edelman and Dana, however, reserved judgment on Bradley’s proposals, which also included a plan he first disclosed Thursday calling for more than $2-billion in redevelopment funds to be spent over the next two decades to help house the city’s homeless.

Under Bradley’s initiative, court backing would be needed to lift a 10-year-old order limiting the amount of money that the Community Redevelopment Agency can spend in the central business district. Bradley wants the ceiling raised to $5 billion from the current level of $750 million, which was set in a 1977 in-court agreement resulting from a lawsuit filed by Councilman Ernani Bernardi and joined by the county.

If the ceiling were raised, about half the additional funds going toward redevelopment would otherwise have been targeted for county use under property tax allocations, according to county officials.

“There has to be a compromise between the city and the county on the revenues that are involved,” Dana said. “Those are the revenues that are needed to provide the social services for the County of Los Angeles.”

Dana added, however, that the Friday session made it clear “we ought to try to stay out of court on the homeless issues. We need to sit down and talk more.”

Bernardi has also said he has not yet made up his mind whether to fight the new redevelopment initiative.