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iAUDIT! - After his election, Franklin Roosevelt proposed a plethora of new policies to battle the Great Depression. From the National Recovery Act (NRA) to the Works Projects Administration (WPA), FDR rolled out one new program after another to help farmers, working people, investors, artists, banks, and small businesses. Collectively, these programs became known as the New Deal, and they gradually restored people’s faith in the economy and gave them hope. But FDR was far more than a policy wonk. He knew he had to sell the New Deal on a personal level. His famous Fireside Chat broadcasts brought his voice into every home with a radio, where he explained the need for his recovery agenda. He backed up his chats with a powerful public relation campaign, with boldly colored posters advertising the latest new program. He released a cadre of writers, artists, and photographers to document the personal costs of the Depression in a way that resonated with individual citizens. One of the most powerful photographs to come out of that era was Dorthea Lange’s “Migrant Mother”, a photograph of an itinerant farm worker and her children camped on the side of the road in Nipomo, California, a small town midway between Santa Maria and Pismo Beach. The photo captured the despair and resolve in the young mother’s face, (she was only 32 but looked much older) as her children hid their faces from the camera. That photograph, and thousands of others, underscored the need for farm relief and other New Deal programs.
Effective public outreach is vital to the success of any government program. But good PR isn’t a substitute for poor performance. One of the reasons the New Deal was successful was because most of its programs worked; they had a real impact on the lives of everyday people. The PR campaign merely reminded people of the need and how they were benefiting from FDR’s agenda. Mayor Bass and most of our other elected officials seem to have learned only half the lesson from the New Deal; when it comes to homelessness, they have a great PR program, but they’re unable to back it up with actual performance.
In the upside-down world of homelessness programming in Los Angeles, the message is more important than the substance. There is no better example than Mayor Bass’ December 9 “Delivering Results” press release on homelessness programs. As I wrote December 12, the press release outlined the supposed successes of the city’s homelessness efforts, including a 10 percent drop in unsheltered homelessness, more people housed or sheltered, and an improvement in the time it takes to get people from the street into housing. The accompanying graphics showed happy, formerly homeless people praising the city for getting them off the streets. The press release abounds with superlatives like “historic policy changes”, an “unprecedented drop in street homelessness”, and “improving life-saving services”. It’s an invigorating and hopeful piece. Unfortunately, it’s more PT Barnum than FDR.
What’s missing from the press release’s 11 pages are several inconvenient facts that refute almost all its claims:
- Despite the claim Inside Safe is a prime conduit to permeant housing and vital services, reports from providers and the city itself say otherwise. According to the City Controller’s Inside Safe dashboard, after spending more than $342 million, 3,639 people have been served by the program; that equates to a cost of $94,100 per person. Of those 3,639 individuals, 789, or just more than 21 percent, have been permanently housed, for a cost of $433,000 per person housed. 789 people housed is just 1.75 percent of the city’s 45,000 homeless, disappointing performance for a program that’s spent more than $300 million.
- A survey by an advocates’ coalition shows more than two-thirds of Inside Safe clients have never received assistance finding permanent housing. Nearly half have received no services of any kind and one in three don’t know who their case manager is.
- The Mayor claimed at least 23,000 people moved into temporary housing, but there are no data supporting that claim. A City Controller’s audit that came out the day after Mayor Bass’ press release put the lie to the Mayor’s braggadocio. It found LAHSA’s data on interim housing are unreliable and its program monitoring is “vastly inadequate”. In fact, neither the City nor LAHSA have any idea how many people have been temporarily housed because data management is so bad, individuals can be counted multiple times as they cycle through the system time after time.
- The Mayor’s press release quoted Bass: “The old ways of managing the crisis instead of solving it are over. We are turning the page to make lasting change. You can see the results with more people inside, more clear sidewalks, and new, innovative housing. We are breaking through past regulations that allowed people to languish on the streets and refusing to tolerate inaction. This progress is fuel for the future – we will not slow down.” In reality, the City has merely pumped more money into a broken system. A September 2024 LA Times article described a City report that says expenditures for current programs would have to be doubled to bring homelessness to functional zero in 10 years. Expenditures at that level are simply unsustainable, yet neither the Mayor nor anyone else has proposed lower cost alternatives.
- Despite the Mayor’s claim the system is more efficient, and more funding is all that’s required for ultimate success, the City Controller found the City spent barely half of its fiscal year 2023-24 homelessness funding. The Controller blamed a “sluggish and inefficient approach” to homelessness interventions.
- Claims of increased permanent housing cannot be supported. The Controller’s December 10 report found that only 17 percent of clients move from City shelters to permanent housing. Of those counted as “housed”, 39 percent were in time limited subsidized (TLS) housing, meaning their rent was being paid for about two years; after the subsidies expire, many people may fall back into homelessness.
- Despite facts that refute nearly every unsubstantiated claim, the Mayor’s office continues to double down on its PR messaging. When HUD recently announced an 18 percent increase in nationwide homelessness, the Mayor was quick to jump into the spotlight and brag about LA’s supposed decrease in homelessness. The Mayor made that claim despite knowing LAHSA’s latest PIT count was as deeply flawed as past surveys, and homelessness may have actually increased.
- The Mayor’s December 9 press release also made no mention of thousands of Project Homekey lying vacant for as much as two years. The Mayor’s claims of making the housing process more efficient ring hollow when apartments meant for homeless people lie vacant while various city departments squabble about jurisdiction and processes.
Unlike the New Deal, the City’s slick public relations campaign can’t be backed up by positive results. Local officials spend more time trying to spin bad reports and making unsupportable claims than actually getting people into the shelter and housing they need. Residents can see the reality of homelessness every day. Until our elected leaders are willing to have honest discussions based on facts instead of political spin, the crisis will only worsen.
(Tim Campbell is a resident of Westchester who spent a career in the public service and managed a municipal performance audit program. He focuses on outcomes instead of process.)
