LOS ANGELES (CN) — The city of Los Angeles was back in court Wednesday to defend its compliance with a 2022 settlement where it agreed to create more than 12,000 shelter spaces for the tens of thousands of homeless people living in makeshift camps across the city.
U.S. District Judge David Carter, a decorated Vietnam veteran who has frequently used the bench as a pulpit to decry the homelessness crisis that has left Southern California veterans with mental health problems living on the streets, earlier this month issued an “order to show cause” why the city shouldn’t be held in contempt.
The judge, a Bill Clinton appointee, noted at the start of the hearing in downtown LA that it wasn’t the first time that the city had failed to live up to its obligations under the 2022 agreement. Carter pointed to a consistent pattern of delay in providing the required quarterly information to the court-appointed special master as well as to the data monitor he appointed earlier this year…