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Los Angeles housing official to head homeless services agency

A homeless man pushes his belongings in a shopping cart on skid row, which has one of the largest populations of homeless people in the United States.
A homeless man pushes his belongings in a shopping cart on skid row, which has one of the largest populations of homeless people in the United States.
(ROBYN BECK / AFP/Getty Images)
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A city housing official was selected Friday to head the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the city-county agency that manages $70 million a year in federal, state and local funding for shelters, housing and services for the very indigent.

Peter Lynn, director of the Section 8 rental assistance program for the city’s Housing Authority, replaces Executive Director Mike Arnold, who retired after nine years in the job. Lynn’s salary was set at $190,000.

Lynn worked as a New York City housing official before joining the local Housing Authority in 2007. Under Lynn, the housing authority’s rental assistance programs for the homeless doubled to more than 14,000 units.

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Arnold was credited with stabilizing the homeless agency’s finances. But the county defied national trends by reporting a 15% jump in the number of homeless people from 2011 to 2013. The total, 54,000, was second only to New York City’s -- although federal officials later knocked the number down to 36,000 because of questions about a survey used in the count.

Controversy flared earlier this year when the agency turned down the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs’ offer to fund a 2014 homeless count.

“Peter’s been both a colleague and a partner,” Arnold said Friday. “The big challenge we have in Los Angeles is we don’t have affordable housing and woefully inadequate permanent supportive housing. I congratulate Peter on taking on one of the hardest jobs in the country.”

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Lynn graduated from Vassar College and has an MBA from New York University, officials said. His appointment, which takes effect Dec. 1, was approved at a meeting Friday by the homeless agency’s 10-member commission, which is split evenly between city and county appointees.

Follow @geholland for news on homelessness and poverty.

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