There are years of policy and systems failures rooted in racism that LAHSA needs to work on, so the impact of changes will likely not be felt immediately. It is a process that requires full transparency and trust from everyone. Building trust requires a demonstrated commitment from leadership over the long term. (1) Additionally, it is essential to examine LAHSA’s relationships with its partners and providers. If those groups continue under a “business as always” mindset, there will be no real growth. Efforts between LAHSA and their partners must be coordinated to expand impact. (2)
Inequitable decision-making and program design is perpetuated by a lack of agency for LAHSA to authentically set its own priorities and make its own decisions.
The staff is ready to change, but it is currently unclear if the institution as a whole is prepared to, or actually can take action in deep and meaningful ways. The pressures from outside entities, especially from LA city and LA County, are real and demanding, and create a circular pattern of harmful organizational behavior internally. Although leaders within LAHSA want to champion the organization and position it in the forefront of excellence in the national homeless services sector, LAHSA’s organizational goals and priorities take a backseat to those that are being developed and forced by external bodies (LAHSA commission, ad hoc committees, etc). The directives given from the Commission create disorganization and shift the roles of employees who were focusing on one thing and now how to place responsibility on another goal.
01
Internal Organizational Behavior
This disorganization creates confusion across all levels within LAHSA. Employees in Senior Leadership roles have to deal with constant incoming and shifting priorities from both the county and the city, which doesn’t allow them to pause to focus on internal strategy and to act with intention across the organization. The influx of outside demands creates a cycle of reactive priorities and decision-making, and this shows up in small, daily decisions, like what meeting takes priority over another for particular leadership staff to attend, to bigger, long-term organizational decisions like the planning for, structure, and support for a Chief Equity officer position. Capacity restraints are most evident at middle management, even where employees want to ameliorate LAHSA’s issues with racial equity. However, neither middle management and nor front-line staff have the time to focus on that internal work. They are so consistently shifted from one goal to another that they lose focus on any essential work that has no deadline. Front-line/outreach employees also experience a lack of transparency about these dynamics from senior leadership, which makes them distrust the organization, decisions, and priorities. Given these dynamics, any organizational restructuring that is occurring must center the ability to be accountable to changed behavior in response to the outside demands. And the accountability, within the new structure, cannot continue to be one-sided, or perceived as one-sided. One-sided accountability creates inauthentic communication, inherent inequality, and ineffective collaborative practices. (3)
Many staff repeat a label that LAHSA is treated as an “ugly stepchild” in the dynamics with partners in Los Angeles. LAHSA ultimately lives into the narrative of the “ugly stepchild,” and all the stereotypic attributes that go with that image, by exhibiting the behavior that is projected onto them. Specifically, this manifests in a lack of empowerment, lack of follow-through and hesitation to take control. The need to navigate the political landscape informs the way LAHSA minimizes its actual power to lead change internally. For staff of color, this is further viewed and experienced in the context of layers of systemic oppression.
White privilege is a systemic reality primarily grounded in inequitable systems and stereotypes (Thomas, 2017). At LAHSA, the relationships between staff and upper management are asymmetric relationships, in which one party is capable of disproportionately imposing their will on the other. This means that upper management has the power to set conditions, make decisions, take action, and exercise control– which determines the relationship (Guess, 2006). Through time and space, established patterns of race relations reproduce structures of domination. It may not be strongly felt or demonstrated, yet those systems uphold inequality within and outside the organization.
02
Organizational Behavior with External Parties
The same pressures that are exerting themselves internally to LAHSA, as described above, also play out in the way LAHSA shows up with external partners, including the Commission, and the City and County. The relationships between entities, and the embodiment of LAHSA as the “step child”, create a dynamic where movement on the recommendations on governance, as articulated in the recent report to the Commission, are at jeopardy of being actualized without particular attention being paid to ways to intentionally interrupt the dynamics of lacking agency and reactivity that continue to play out. If LAHSA is unable to interrupt these patterns, or be transparent about them in a more significant way, it is likely to continue to face barriers both internally and externally with advancing racial equity goals. Movement on governance, including transparency, role-clarity, and system-wide vision and goals must move forward in a racially explicit way. And although it will be difficult for LAHSA to navigate a role that is leading this work, it will be a necessary role to play to build trust, and to interrupt the harm that is occurring for BIPOC staff within the organization and amongst BIPOC who are experiencing homelessness and housing instability in Los Angeles.
01
Make racial equity everyone’s responsibility.
This may include:
- Ensuring that each role has racial equity-related accountability and goals integrating racial equity actions and aligned strategy into team project/action plans and role related performance review processes
- Power Shifting, i.e., sharing inclusive leadership practices around how racial equity is part of everyone’s role by centering Black, brown and other BIPOC staff, but not leaving it to these individuals to do racial equity work
- Provide professional development and training, including cultural humility practices
02
Implement an equity based decision-making framework (4) in all pillars and functions of the organization to guide decision-making as leaders.
This may include:
- Identifying the practices teams will adopt to transparently address power dynamics in their relationships and decision-making processes
- Creating an accountability structure to hold change
03
Develop an annual continuous quality improvement plan
This plan may include but is not limited to:
- Continuing the established Racial Equity management workgroup as the primary home for holding theory of change, related organizational goals, resources allocation and continuous quality improvement.
- Providing a consistent cadence of executive leadership communication, reflecting publicly and reporting-out progress, new challenges, new learning, and team growth
- Monitoring progress, impact and new opportunities across organizational pillars and leadership levels.
- Provide transparent access to change/progress via a tracking mechanism, so long as that mechanism does not drive transnational organizational behavior