A Westside-based nonprofit filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to overturn Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ declaration of a local homelessness and housing emergency, calling it a “vast and illegal expansion of mayoral power.”

Fix the City, which has sued the city government several times over planning and development decisions, said in its lawsuit that the mayor’s statement improperly eliminates competitive bidding, thereby “defeating the state’s goal of fairness, transparency and fiscal responsibility in government procurement guarantee” is undermined.

According to the lawsuit, the mayor’s statement and accompanying guidelines allowed 100% affordable housing developments to bypass the city’s planning review process, eliminating “public hearings, due process, and the right of appeal” for such projects.

“By doing so, the mayor is allowing years of construction for which there is no development planning oversight,” the lawsuit said. “That’s just one long-term impact on the citizens of the city of Los Angeles.”

An aide to Bass did not immediately refute the claims in the lawsuit, which appears to be the first major legal challenge to the mayor’s homelessness initiatives.

“The complaint has just been filed,” said mayoral spokesperson Clara Karger, “and we will take the time to review it.”

The lawsuit seeks to rescind three executive orders issued by Bass as part of the homelessness crisis. Two were written to expedite the city’s review and approval of homeless shelters and affordable housing. A third serves as the backbone of the mayor’s Inside Safe initiative, which has driven away unhoused residents

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the streets and in temporary and permanent housing.

In recent weeks, Bass has touted the city’s progress in addressing the crisis, saying her first executive order helped speed the city’s processing of more than 7,000 affordable housing units.

“This is what urgency looks like,” Bass said last week, celebrating the completion of an affordable housing development in Hollywood. “Approval processes that used to take six months now take 47 days.”

Bass declared a state of emergency about homelessness in December, and took that step on her first day on the job. The declaration was intended to speed up the process of building temporary and permanent housing, in part by allowing the mayor’s office to make contract decisions that do not require competitive bidding or City Council approval.

The council approved the declaration and repeated it monthly until July, when the mayor issued a new, revised emergency declaration.

That order, which remains in effect, authorizes Bass to seize property and use it for temporary housing, to suspend competitive bidding on contracts lasting less than one year, and to issue orders and directives targeting on tackling the housing and homelessness emergency.

In its lawsuit, Fix the City questioned the justification for the emergency declaration, saying the city’s homelessness and housing affordability problems are “chronic in nature” and not “sudden or unexpected.” In the years before Bass took office, Mayor Eric Garcetti declared a shelter crisis, adding to city leaders’ concerns

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to combat homelessness, said Mike Eveloff, president of Fix the City.

“We’re not trying to get the city to stop addressing homelessness. They have the resources they need to do that,” he said. “We are trying to prevent the loss of due process and transparency, all of which are necessary to prevent corruption, of which we have seen far too much.”

Fix the City has focused on a series of land use decisions in different parts of LA, with the most recent focus on a proposed 30-bed homeless shelter planned for Pico Boulevard. In 2013 the organization was one of them

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several have successfully completed the city’s update of the Hollywood Community Plan, which includes the

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development strategy for that part of the city.

It took the planning department a decade to rewrite that document, which was approved by the City Council in May. A month later, Fix the City filed another lawsuit and asked a judge to overturn it.

Monday’s lawsuit was prepared by Robert P. Silverstein, a lawyer who succeeded on behalf of his clients in overturning approvals of construction projects in Hollywood and elsewhere.