For three decades, the city and county of Los Angeles managed California’s biggest homelessness crisis together.

They had equal say in big funding decisions, and worked in tandem to coordinate housing programs through a joint city-county agency called the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

But after scathing audits criticizing the homeless authority, the county is blowing up that joint agency and starting over — despite the objections of LA Mayor Karen Bass. Now, questions remain about how the shakeup will affect the more than 75,000 unhoused people living in LA County.

It’s the most dramatic recent example of a phenomenon playing out all over California. Cities which supply shelter beds, and counties, which provide crucial mental health and addiction treatment, can’t effectively address homelessness unless they work well together. But all too often, they don’t.

In multiple cities, mayors are publicly attacking their counties for failing to pull their weight. In San Diego, a 150-bed shelter created as a partnership between the city and county is in jeopardy, as both sides squabble over who should pay for what. In the San Joaquin Valley, the city of Turlock is refusing to let Stanislaus County fund a shelter there. A state bill that would have forced counties to pay for half the cost of city-run homeless shelters faced fierce pushback from counties, and was swiftly gutted.

There’s no shortage of evidence on why working together is beneficial. Cities don’t have behavioral health departments, or funding for those services. So when residents of city homeless shelters need mental health or addiction treatment, which they often do, that falls on the county.

The League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties even released a report in 2018 highlighting the importance of cities and counties addressing homelessness together.

There is no mandate from the state that lays out how much of the responsibility should fall to a city and how much should fall to a county. Especially in tight budget years such as this one, cities don’t want to pay for services they could pass on to the county – and vice versa. And neither wants to take the blame for falling short as they struggle under the immense challenge of getting people off the street.