LA’s governance arrangements for addressing homelessness continue to evolve – with continuing fluidity as to how the various parts align with each other. Against that backdrop, the University of Southern California’s Price School Professor of Public Policy Shui Yan Tang and I have been invited to make a presentation at the June 18th meeting of the multistakeholder Leadership Table on “How the Leadership Table can sustainably add value”. As the presentation details, we argue that it can do so via three mutually-reinforcing mechanisms –  each valuable in its own right, and collectively mutually reinforcing, with success vis-à-vis one entry point enhancing trust and thus the effectiveness of the others. The three are:

• Problem-focused collaborative governance;
• Fostering a shared systemic understanding of how the various parts fit together – how the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts; and
• ‘soft mutual accountability’, centered around shared purpose, vis-a-vis budgetary trade-offs, operational efficiency, and effectiveness in prioritization.

For readers interested in some earlier work by Professor Tang and myself on the challenges of homelessness and its governance in the LA region, here are links to three articles:

(i) An article in the Fall 2025 National Civic Review on recent governance reforms to better address homelessness in the Los Angeles region, co-authored with USC Professor of Public Policy Shui-Yan Tang:
https://www.nationalcivicleague.org/ncr-article/addressing-homelessness-the-los-angeles-regions-bold-governance-reforms/

(ii) An empirical analysis of the magnitude of LA’s homelessness challenge, and its associated policy choices, framed as a flow:
https://workingwiththegrain.com/2025/10/31/la-homelessness-setting-the-stage-for-painful-choices-an-empirical-re-framing/

(iii) A Los Angeles Times Op-Ed piece on the top-line goals for addressing homelessness, developed by the Leadership Table and formally adopted by LA County in mid-2025:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-05-21/los-angeles-city-county-homelessness-goals

Also perhaps of interest is an overview piece on “Abundance, hope, homelessness” that I published in January 2026 on the online Persuasion platform: