On September 1, LA City Council unanimously approved a motion from Councilmember Traci Park ratcheting up the City’s coercive approach to unhoused people on the Westside. The motion replaces two relatively limited CARE cleaning days with “CARE+” operations, comprehensive encampment sweeps where police are typically present and residents are forced to move their tents and belongings. To make that change, it transfers $200,000 designated for “Additional Homeless Services – CD11” to the Bureau of Sanitation’s contractual services account. The entire substance of the proposal fit into a single sentence authorizing the transfer “to convert two CARE Team operation days into two CARE+ Team operation days.”
The motion does not identify where the operations will take place, how frequently the operation days will recur, how many cleanups the $200,000 will fund, or which contractors will receive the money. It also doesn’t explain why the conversion costs $200,000 or whether any services would be available to affected unhoused people.
Park introduced the motion on August 21, with Councilmember Curren Price seconding, using a procedure known as a Rule 16 motion. Rule 16 allows a councilmember with a seconder to place an item directly on the full Council agenda instead of sending it through a committee. As a result, this transfer of funds to allow for more aggressive operations against poor people bypassed both the Housing and Homelessness Committee and the Budget and Finance Committee. No committee reviewed the cost, requested a report from Sanitation, heard from homeless service providers or unhoused residents, or considered whether money set aside for homeless services might be more effectively spent on housing or homelessness prevention. And nothing in Council File 26-1167 identifies an emergency or explains why the ordinary committee process was not used.
At the September 1 meeting, the motion appeared as Item 11 among a large group of items for which no public hearing was previously held. City Hall journalist Daniel Guss was the only member of the public to question it. “Over what period of time?” he asked. “A week? A month?” No one answered. After public comment closed, Item 11 was bundled with numerous unrelated matters for a single vote. The Council President asked whether any member wished to speak, and no one did. The group of items passed 11–0, with every councilmember present voting yes, including Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado, Nithya Raman, Hugo Soto-Martínez and Katy Yaroslavsky. Marqueece Harris-Dawson, John Lee, Imelda Padilla and Price were absent for the vote.
Although CARE and CARE+ sound like variations of the same service, they represent fundamentally different approaches to unhoused people and their belongings. CARE operations are generally described as lighter-touch or “spot” cleanings in which workers remove accessible trash and identified hazards while cleaning around tents and living areas. CARE+ operations, on the other hand, are comprehensive cleanings that require people to move themselvesand all their belongings out of a designated area. These sweeps typically occur in the early morning, and often without the required postings notifying residents. Sanitation crews use waste trucks, power-washing equipment, heavy machinery and biohazard contractors to clear and clean the site.
An official Sanitation report describes CARE+ as “full comprehensive cleanings” with a deployment schedule that repeats every week. A CARE+ “operation day” appears as a recurring slot on Sanitation’s weekly schedule, not a single cleanup. But Park’s motion never explains how often the two converted days will recur, how long the conversion will last, or how many CARE+ sweeps the $200,000 will ultimately fund.
Because forcing people to dismantle their homes and move everything they own is inherently coercive, CARE+ sweeps almost always involve police. And yet, the $200,000 does not include the cost of LAPD. Sanitation’s 2022 report requested “dedicated on-site LAPD support for all CARE+ operations,” while an independent study found that officers attend to “encourage” people to leave so cleanings can proceed. Their presence carries an implicit threat of enforcement during an already traumatic displacement, adding costs that Park’s motion does not disclose.
Once residents have moved, Sanitation workers determine what constitutes trash or contaminated material and what qualifies as personal property to be stored. Material classified as trash or contaminated can be destroyed, while other unattended property is supposed to be bagged, tagged and stored for 90 days. Unhoused residents and advocates have repeatedly documented tents, medication, identification, clothing and other essential possessions being discarded during these operations. Earlier this year, a federal judge found that Los Angeles unlawfully destroyed unhoused people’s belongings during CARE+ and other cleanups. According to LA Public Press, the court also found that City employees had altered records after the fact to make it appear that personal property had been properly separated from hazardous material.
This additional CARE+ funding comes to a district that already conducts more of these operations than any other in Los Angeles. LA Public Press found that Park’s office oversaw 1,014 CARE+ operations in 2025, a 46 percent increase from the previous year and the highest total in the city. A recent report published by UCLA’s Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy examined what that system looks like on the ground in Venice. Across 13 operation days, researchers observed an average of 15 City workers and 10 City vehicles. The operations displaced 44 unhoused people, while only nine received outreach from a homelessness service provider, or approximately five people displaced for every person reached by outreach.
The researchers concluded that CARE+ operations in Venice primarily moved people and their belongings without connecting those affected to shelter or housing. They also noted that the City’s CARE+ expenditures do not include the cost of police, Council staff and employees from other departments who may join the operations.
It’s also worth noting that $200,000 is enough money to make a measurable difference through programs intended to prevent homelessness. LA County’s Homelessness Prevention Unit has a current annual budget of $6.3 million to support approximately 750 households at high risk of losing their housing, an average of about $8,400 per household. The program provides flexible assistance for rent, utilities, vehicle repairs and debt, along with legal services, benefits advocacy and connections to health and employment services. At that average cost, $200,000 could support approximately 24 households through the homelessness prevention program. Instead, City Council continues to rubber-stamp an ever-expanding war on unhoused Angelenos.