A federal court hearing over the City of Los Angeles’ compliance with a homelessness settlement resumed Monday with continued testimony from a top city official, a nonprofit housing provider and a former executive of the now-defunct Skid Row Housing Trust.

An attorney involved in the case said U.S. District Judge David Carter is expected to decide Tuesday whether to require testimony from Bass or Councilmember Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez – who had been subpoenaed by the plaintiffs – though it appears unlikely he will do so.

The evidentiary hearing, now in its second week, centers on whether the city breached a 2022 agreement with the LA Alliance Human Rights, a coalition of residents and businesses that sued over the city’s and county’s handling of homelessness. A final ruling could still be weeks or even months away.

In addition to City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, Monday’s hearing included testimonies from Brian Ulf, CEO of SHARE! (Self-Help and Recovery Exchange), a nonprofit that provides housing and self-support to people in need, as well as Lee Raagas, former interim CEO of the Skid Row Housing Trust.

In an interview after his appearance, Ulf noted the importance of peer-supported living environments as a key to long-term stability for formerly unhoused individuals. SHARE! Operates 42 single family homes across LA County, where groups of eight men or eight women live together and participate in self-help groups to build social support and structure.

“Our success rates are off the charts,” he said. “They asked me today, Brian, if we were asking you to house 1,000 people, how much would it cost? We said, $23 million, and how quickly could we do that? We’re so successful that we turn every bed 1.6 times a year. So if they asked us to house 1,000, we’ll probably get through about 1,600.”

Ulf said that currently, SHARE! works directly with individual landlords, which can slow the process of finding homes willing to participate in the program. Under their agreements, landlords are required to provide essentials like knives, forks and pillowcases, cable TV, and to operate the home similar to an Airbnb.

While this system works adequately, Ulf said many landlords would prefer a structure in which the city or county master leases homes from the landlords directly, and then turns them over to providers like SHARE! To operate.

“And that way, the landlord, if something gets broken, he doesn’t have to fix it,” he said. ‘It’s the county or the city whoever master leases it.”

Szabo remained on the stand for a third day of testimony, facing cross examination from both sides. The city’s legal team has worked to portray Los Angeles as making a good-faith effort to meet the terms of the agreement despite obstacles such as the January wildfires and a looming budget deficit.

“We have not paused efforts to comply with the settlement agreement, even in the face of the Declaration of Emergency based on the wildfires in January,” Szabo said in response to a question by Marcellus McRae, one of the attorneys who represent the city in the case.

Szabo also said city officials anticipated the possibility of missing deadlines over the five-year term of the agreement, citing the complexities of building housing–particularly permanent housing–which requires multiple levels of approval and public engagement.

“Not only do we think that there might be a case where the milestone would be missed, it was likely that something would happen, which is why we only agreed to provide milestone, we did not agree to interim quarterly requirements that we did not meet, we would be in breach” Szabo said.

He added: “We never would’ve agreed to that because I wasn’t going to allow this agreement to supersede a public process that is necessary.”