Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Executive Director Heidi Marston offered her resignation amid a dispute with the LAHSA board about her decision to increase the salary of its staff with the lowest pay. Marston leaves LAHSA at an important moment as many factors, including LA county and city elections, could change the strategy on how the area aids its homeless people.
Many LAHSA governing commission members stated that Marston’s unexpected decision has disappointed and perplexed them. Commissioner Andy Bales realizes that Marston had made her decision but requested her to not leave.
Marston told the board that her resignation from the organization would be effective from May 27, 2022. On the other hand, LAHSA Commission Chairperson Jacqueline Waggoner stated that it would appoint interim leadership immediately.
Marston started the job on an interim basis three years ago and supervised the agency throughout the coronavirus epidemic period. Marston played an instrumental role in coordinating and establishing a group of rental hotels with individual rooms to accommodate homeless individuals at risk of coronavirus.
The organization is in a tricky spot as it cannot build shelter or housing and the tools to help people go away from the streets. The sway of the agency largely stems from distributing funds to charity organizations that operate shelters and recruiting outreach employees spread out over the area to aid homeless folks.
Some of those service providers wonder whether top-level turnover will make their work complex when there is much soul-searching over LAHSA’s bureaucratic structure and how LAHSA interacts with city, federal and county agencies. Many competing visions on reforming LAHSA, including moving its outreach staffers to another county entity while dissolving it completely, are getting more traction.
PATH Executive Director Jennifer Dietz asked whether the departure of Marston would create chaos as stability is required more than before. For your information, PATH is a nonprofit organization that has aided in doing outreach across Los Angeles.
Marston revealed that LAHSA workers were earning only small amounts of money and that LAHSA was facing a large level of turnover consequently. Last March, Marston increased the annual salaries of 196 LAHSA workers while freezing the compensation for its ten highest-paid employees.
After making the choice, LAHSA board members have been accusing her of undermining the managerial position in negotiating the new LAHSA Union Contract again. She stated that her choice addressed the need to align LAHSA values and commitment at all levels of its work.
Marston had criticized Los Angeles officials for paying too much attention to erasing visible homelessness signs and failing to address the root causes of the homelessness crisis more adequately.
In a recent interview, she stated that she made the announcement the other week for no one reason. She added that the pay dispute reflected her frustration about the governance and financial constraints impeding the mission of LAHSA to end homelessness.
As the director, Marston has faced the dilemma of driving and representing the homeless service best practices of LA while tasked with the adoption of funding and policy decisions straying from the practices.
Dietz appreciated the willingness of Marston to criticize the systems causing and perpetuating homelessness. Dietz had stated that resources tend to be distributed politically and less effectively with regard to helping homeless people.
Despite appreciating Marston, Dietz called out some aspects of how the director went about increasing staff salaries as well. She attributed the decision to LAHSA poaching several workers from her agency.
In hindsight, Dietz would have preferred to see the agency speak to homeless service providers and form a plan to allow for the salary increases in lockstep.
LAHSA’s oversight commission questioned Marston’s unilateral choice. As per multiple LA Times sources, the LAHSA board did not oppose the idea of increasing salaries but rather needed to play a part in approving those hikes.
The commissioners were told about the pay raises last March through email and did not raise any concerns at the time. However, in January 2022, the commissioners questioned Marston’s choice after it turned into an issue during negotiations with SEIU, contributing to pay raises in addition to new base salaries.
The management committee of the commission looked for clarification from Attorney Mike Feuer who represents the City of Los Angeles. Attorneys discovered that the pay hikes constituted a union contract revision that the commission should have approved.
As per a recent memo, the hike in LAHSA employee compensation does not seem to be under the delegated authority of the commission to the director.
The LA Times interviewed some commissioners, and they denied the idea that they sought to reprimand the LAHSA executive director. Marston was unconcerned about getting fired, either.
Former commission member Sarah Dusseault stated that there was never any dispute and that front-line staffers got their raises with effect from March 2021. Dusseault was a management committee member back in the day. Dusseault claimed that while the committee backed better pay, it asked questions over implementation that were supposed to get resolved.
There is also the notion that Marston was behaving in a way that the commission could not accept. However, in a recent interview, Marston dismissed that notion.
Marston said that the increases were not beyond the specific budget that the commission had also approved. Therefore, Marston asked what the point of having the directorial position or the position of a CEO is if that person should approach the commission over this matter.